


Stars Trek Hollow

by thingsbaker



Category: Gilmore Girls, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crossover, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Slow Build, Star Trek Stars Hollow AU, but not as slow as the actual show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 22:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 43,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13467462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingsbaker/pseuds/thingsbaker
Summary: It's the Stars Hollow/Star Trek crossover that you never knew you always wanted.Or, Spock's just a single dad in a small town, trying to navigate his rocky relationship with his estranged parents and his attraction to the local diner operator, while talking and drinking coffee almost constantly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is somewhat built to echo the first season of Gilmore Girls, but with an entirely ST cast. It started as a crazy idea in my head and became... a much longer crazy idea in writing. I hope anyone outside of my head finds it entertaining! (You don't need to know much about GG for it to work, but it's probably better if you do).  
> It's basically "finished," but the end of the story is like the end of a television season -- there are some threads left a bit loose, in case I ever get the nerve/energy/crazy up again enough to write a Season 2.

In town, they called the house “The Embassy.” Spock knew this, even though people went out of their way not to say it in front of him. Growing up there, it hadn’t seemed so grand — though it had certainly at times felt imposing, too large, and isolating. Now, approaching it after a sixteen-year absence, he could see why people referred to it thus. It wasn’t just because his father had once, actually, been the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, though that certainly contributed. The house had a circular front drive, built for receiving guests who would be left at the door by a hired driver, and two prominent flagpoles over the front portico. His mother had once dared to briefly replace the American flags with a bright green banner — Spock’s favorite color — to celebrate his twelfth birthday. The Ambassador had not been pleased.

Spock shook himself, trying not to dwell in memory. It did no good, and it was clearly, also, a stalling tactic. He was here with a purpose, after all. He opened the door of his dependable, well-kept, and never-to-be-mistaken-for-a-limousine Jeep, gripped his leather satchel, and stepped onto the brushed-flat gravel of the grand driveway. His hand had rung the bell before he could think about it too deeply.

A uniformed maid met him at the door. Somehow, the starched lines of her outfit made him feel rumpled and too casual, though he was wearing his best suit and tie, one that he had used to meet with major conference organizers and VIPs at the Inn. “Yes?” she said, staring at him blankly.

“I am here to see the Ambassador and — “ he paused on the verge of saying, “Dr. Grayson,” then shook his head and continued, “my mother.”

Very little had changed in the house since his last visit, which Spock actually found a bit surprising. Though his father had certainly been committed to keeping the house in its classic state, his mother had always found ways to influence the household design. After the startled maid admitted him to the front parlor, he stood staring at the same well-appointed Chippendale furniture that he had last seen during his sophomore year of high school. This couch, in fact, had been the last place he had sat in the entire house, if he remembered correctly. From here, after his disastrous argument with his father, he had walked stiffly to his bedroom, gathered the few things he could fit into the small suitcase in his closet, and left without a word. 

And now he was back. The smell of the place was different, he thought. A bit more dust, a bit less potpourri. Then again, everyone had been into potpourri when he’d left in the late 90s — honestly, he thought, staring down at a finely etched glass bowl that had used to hold dried rose petals and now held a twirl of fresh evergreen branches, every single memory was going to lead him back to the last night here.

“Spock?”

His mother’s voice was soft, bewildered, and surprisingly thin. He turned and faced her, surprised to find her hair pinned up. She had always worn her hair down during his childhood except when at work, and that had been how he had pictured her in the intervening years. Now, with her hair swept up and her dark eyes large in her pale face, the resemblance between Spock’s mother and Spock’s daughter was unmistakeable. He looked away before any emotion could overcome him.

“Hello, Mother,” he said, eyes focused again on the evergreen bowl. They had not seen each other in person for almost eleven years, not since the last time she had come to talk to him, one final time, at his place of work. That memory, too, threatened emotion, and Spock shoved it ruthlessly down. “I apologize for interrupting your day.”

“No, that’s — there’s no — it’s fine,” she said, stepping slowly into the room, as though afraid he might spook and run.

She looked well enough, Spock thought, though thinner than he had remembered her. Today, she wore a tunic of pale cream with faintly visible golden seashell patterns over brown-gold pants and flat shoes. The clothes were simple but clearly expensive. If she was this dressed up, there was certainly somewhere she was expected. Perhaps she was working today, after all. 

He glanced past her to the empty hallway, wondering whether his father would deign to appear and whether Spock wanted him to. Should he ask? Or was it better to simply speak with his mother and make his exit? Before he could answer that question or shove it away, there were sharp footfalls in the hall beyond, and Spock watched his mother’s open, almost hopeful expression shutter. She stepped more fully into the room to admit her husband, and Spock turned away from the glass bowl to face him.

The Ambassador — Sarek looked older, Spock thought, straightening to his own full height out of trained habit. His face had thinned, exposing deep lines near his mouth and across his forehead. His once jet-black hair had grayed. In the sixteen years since Spock had left — had been thrown out of, and had run from — his home, Sarek had aged more than that length of time would have naturally allowed. Spock hoped none of his own surprise showed on his face. Instead, he nodded in greeting and said, “Father.”

“It is really you, then,” Sarek said, folding his hands before him, against the fine gray cashmere of his high-necked sweater. “I had thought the new maid had been swindled by a solicitor.” 

Spock raised an eyebrow. No servant at this home would ever be so ill-trained, surely, he thought, but did not say. Sarek continued to study him, and Spock wondered how he must look, sixteen years on; he certainly felt like he had more than doubled his own age since his father had last seen him in person, though his hair was still jet black, no longer a perfect match of Sarek’s own. 

His father seemed likely to study him for the remainder of the day, but the silence surrounding them had grown beyond Spock’s tolerance. “You must be wondering why I’m here.”

“Indeed,” Sarek said, though his flat tone implied no curiosity.

“Is it — your daughter?” his mother asked. She had folded her hands before her, and now she wrung them, slightly. “Is she well?”

“She is quite well,” Spock said. “She is in school right now. It is actually about her school that I have come to talk with you.”

“Please, sit,” his mother said, gesturing to the couch. “Could — could we all just sit, for a moment? Perhaps you could tell us more about, ah —“

“Po,” Spock said. “She prefers to be called Po.” He took a seat on the very edge of the couch, then watched his mother and father have a conversation by looks alone that ended with his mother sitting on the other end of the couch while his father unbent himself just slightly into an armchair across from them. “I have brought pictures, if you would like to see them.”

“Yes,” his mother said, voice breathy, “I would love to. Please.” 

They passed eight minutes sifting through the photographs that Spock had carefully collected into an iPad album for just this purpose. He narrated them efficiently, but with enough detail, apparently, to bring a noticeable dampness to his mother’s eyes.

“She’s lovely, Spock," his mother said, gazing at a photo from the most recent snowstorm. Po’s red-cheeked face glowed in the reflected snow light, her smile broad and delighted after a particularly bitter round of snowball throwing. “And it sounds like she’s excelling in school and socially. Just doing so well. Are — are you, also, doing well? May I ask?”

“I am quite well,” Spock said, and it was the truth. Professionally and personally, his life was proceeding better than he could have ever hoped when he left home. He saw a line of tension ease across his mother’s forehead, and he fought the urge to touch her hand, just briefly, in reassurance. 

“You said you are here because of Po’s school,” his father said, shifting forward, slightly, in his chair. Before he could say more, Spock’s mother thrust the iPad into his hands and then walked to his side, scrolling through the pictures while he looked on. 

Spock, too, watched the photos slide by: Po at swim practice, Po on stage winning the science fair for a third straight year, Po with her strangely adorable middle school graduation cap, Po smiling at the counter of Jim’s diner. Po. He cleared his throat. “Yes. Po’s school, while the best that our town has to offer, no longer provides her with adequate mental stimulation. Her teachers have recommended that I place her at Chilton, particularly as she has aspirations toward an Ivy League college.” Sarek slid back in his chair, his hand dropping from the iPad. Spock carried on. “Though I make a living that is comfortable for us both, I do not currently have the level of income that is required to attend Chilton, and I cannot secure a personal loan for this purpose. In addition, because it is mid-year, all of the scholarships and grants have already been exhausted. I — “ he paused, trying to remember the phrasing he had worked out the night before. “I would not ask you for anything for myself,” he said. “I have never gone back on that agreement. However, I find that in this case — for Po, I would do anything. I cannot afford this school, but I would do anything if you would… if you could find it in your budget to loan me this money. I believe I could pay it back within seven years with a reasonable rate of interest, and —“

“Of course,” his mother said, before Sarek could do more than open his mouth. “Of course, Spock, we’d be —“

“I will not loan you the money,” Sarek said, his words sinking in like a sucker punch, just after the brief rush of relief Spock had felt at his mother’s assurances. 

“Sarek!” she said, voice rising sharply as she stood up straight. “Our son — and granddaughter — ”

“Let me finish, please,” Sarek said, voice so smooth and calm that it somehow further stoked Spock’s rising anger. “I will not loan it to you. I would, instead, prefer to give it as a gift. Education is and has always been something we value, and I would see your daughter well provisioned.”

“I am certain we do not need your charity,” Spock said, shifting to rise, and his father held out a quelling hand.

“Then perhaps you would consider an alternate form of repayment,” he said, still calm, but his eyes had narrowed. Years of hearing his father negotiate had trained Spock to know he was now on dangerous ground. 

“What are your terms?” he asked. 

Sarek looked up at Amanda so briefly Spock thought he’d imagined it. “Dinner,” he said, finally. “As a family. Once a week. You, and Po, at our home. For the duration of her schooling.”

Before Spock could even school his features — which must have been a beacon of shocked surprise — his mother spoke up. “Perhaps Friday nights?” she asked. Spock couldn’t look at her, knowing he would see the visual representation of the bright hope in her voice. Dinner, with his parents and Po, every Friday, for the next two years. Logically, Spock understood it was a small price to pay. He really couldn’t afford to pay the tuition, and taking on a loan from his parents would have taxed him to the limits of his income. 

Yet returning here, to where he had spent so many years feeling misunderstood, where he had spent so many silent dinners slouched under the weight of his father’s heavy disapproval — it made everything rebellious in Spock’s soul begin to scream and urge him to run.

But: Po.

He inclined his head. “I shall of course need to speak with Po on the matter, but I believe these terms will be acceptable.”

“Excellent.” His father stood. “We should return to our conference call. Your mother’s Mandarin is the only translation I trust.” He crossed his hands before him, and Spock stood, too, leaving his own loose at his sides. “We will expect you on Friday at 6,” Sarek said. “Please send over the information for the finance office at Chilton, and I’ll have the money couriered immediately.”

Spock nodded, and Sarek swept out. His mother took a few steps, then handed him the iPad, her hand lingering over the screen.

“If you would like,” he said, as he tucked it back into his satchel, “I could send the photos to you.”

“I would like that,” she said. “I —“ She covered her mouth briefly. “Oh, Spock. Thank you for coming, and — for coming back.”

He nodded, again, not sure what else to say, and she nodded too before turning and walking after Sarek. Spock let himself take two slow, deep breaths before he followed them out of the room. Then he walked himself down the hall of his childhood home and, finally, back into the fresh air, feeling like he had made only a small and temporary escape. “See you Friday,” he said, quietly, as he patted the iron rail on his way down.

+++

By the time he made it back to town, there was no use in going back to work. He had only thirty minutes before Po would be out of school, and they always met at Jim’s Diner. He walked in and saw Jim look up from the counter, grin already in place. “Hey!” he called, and Spock nodded, taking a table near the window. 

Jim walked over in what seemed only seconds, carrying two cups of coffee. He had a towel thrown over his shoulder and a notepad tucked into one pocket, the only signs of his trade. Otherwise, Jim Kirk always dressed the same for work: gray heavy-duty hiking boots, tightly laced and only a bit faded; comfortable jeans that hugged his body a bit closer than necessary but not so close as to be indecent; and a T-shirt under a flannel button-up. Today, it was an old gray band T-shirt under a mustard-yellow plaid that shouldn’t have looked good, but did anyway. Such were the charms of Jim.

They had known each other for about 10 years now. Jim had returned to town fresh out of a tour in Afghanistan, field-promoted to Captain before he had been honorably discharged due to an injury Spock had never heard him discuss. His father, George Kirk, had owned the town hardware store for something like 30 years, a store that had taken up most of the building where Jim’s Diner now sat. The store itself had closed down a few years before Jim had returned. His father, also a veteran and generally considered a town hero, had died only a year after Jim had left the military, and Jim had spent that time caring for him. 

The diner had opened about six months after George Kirk’s death, doors opening in the fall of the first year that Po attended Kindergarten. Spock had been more than typically nervous about leaving her. He had spent more than his fair share of days waiting out Po’s schoolday hours at Jim’s Diner, from where he could be at the school’s doorstep in 3 minutes if he ran. Jim had been respectful of his silence, and then persistent in drawing him into conversation, once he’d somehow sensed Spock’s loneliness. Now, if he had been asked to quantify it, he would have listed Jim as one of his two closest friends.

“Uh-oh,” Jim said, setting the coffee down. “That bad?”

“In some ways, much worse than I expected,” Spock admitted, and Jim slid into the seat across from him.

The afternoon crowd at the diner was light, and Jim’s part-time server, Pavel Chekov, was nowhere to be seen, though Spock could hear the day-shift chef, Janice Rand, singing softly to the radio in the kitchen. There was only one other table with customers, and they were local enough to get their own refills if needed. This was some of what Spock liked about Jim’s Diner. The informality was completely at odds with his own upbringing — and with the house he’d just left.

Spock cupped his hands around the warm mug, taking a moment to inhale the familiar aroma of Jim’s regular brew. He felt himself relax slightly, more when Jim started to speak. “What if — just hear me out, OK? What if, we could do fundraisers here. Once a month. And I could, the money I kick in for the vet center —“

“Jim,” Spock said, resting his hand on Jim’s covered wrist just briefly, “I would never ask you to give up your work for the center, particularly for something as relatively trivial as a school transfer.” Jim contributed a portion of his income to a local veteran’s center, which he had set up himself in his father’s name. The center was run by one of Jim’s old Army buddies, a doctor named Leonard McCoy, who was something of an acquired taste.

“Maybe,” Jim said. “I — public school, it’s not so bad. I mean…” he trailed off. The truth was, of course, that there was nothing truly wrong with Po’s current school. Jim was himself a product of Stars Hollow High, as were many intelligent, successful people. Po would be fine at SHH. And yet — “It’s just she has her heart set on it,” Jim said, as though reading his mind.

“Indeed,” Spock said, “which is why it is fortunate that my parents have agreed to pay for her tuition.”

“What?” Jim blinked. “Holy shit, Spock — the way you looked, I thought maybe they were going to try and repossess you or something. This is great, right? Or — no, clearly, it’s not great, you look like someone kicked you. What is it?”

“They have demanded, as payment, that Po and I attend a family dinner with them every Friday night.” 

Jim, to his credit, didn’t ask why this was a big deal. He had heard the whole story, more than just the sanitized version that Spock shared with Po’s friends’ parents or acquaintances. Sixteen years ago, Spock’s girlfriend, T’Pring, had announced that she was pregnant. Her family’s religious beliefs (and state laws concerning minors) had not allowed for the possibility of an abortion, but neither could she countenance keeping a child she had said she absolutely did not want and could not afford. T’Pring was the daughter of two wealthy business leaders and had been expected to earn admission to the London School of Economics. She had seen the pregnancy as an enormous inconvenience and Spock’s role in it as “embarrassing.”

Spock had argued for keeping the baby. The idea of his child being adopted, whisked into some mysterious upbringing beyond his control or knowledge — it had eaten at him for the first months of T’Pring’s pregnancy. When the time came to tell his parents, as her condition became visible, Spock had balked at outlining the adoption plan. He’d let her do most of the talking during that very tense evening and retired early and silently to his room after dinner.

By that time, Spock’s family had been back in the United States for four years, long enough for Spock to be enrolled in the prestigious Science Academy in nearby Vulcan County. The school itself was populated mostly by rich American children sent away by parents who had little time or patience to deal with their intellect or behavior. Spock had been an oddity from the start. Most of the other children had been boarded together since early grades and had formed a tight-knit cohort, to which Spock, as a non-boarding student, had never been welcomed. Most came from significant and growing wealth well beyond that which Spock could imagine: his father was certainly wealthy, but that was small change to the billionaires populating the Academy. Finally, Spock’s schooling prior to the VSA had taken place mostly abroad, leaving its legacy in certain habits of speech and study which the other children mocked mercilessly. Though the Science Academy advertised itself as a global leader in education, it had no place for a child with a foot in two different worlds.

That his own child might be subject to such bullying (or worse) made Spock’s stomach turn. His parents had never fully understood the depth of ostracizing Spock had felt at the VSA. His father had thought Spock was being willfully standoffish, while his mother had always encouraged him to give things time. He had been considering routes of drastic action — running away, namely, and trying to find his half-brother Sybok in New York, perhaps — for sometime. Then, with T’Pring pregnant, he’d had an even better reason to want to leave Sarek’s home for good.

T’Pring had given birth exactly on schedule. Spock had been allowed to attend the birth, as both sets of parents thought it might prove a good lesson. Instead, it further galvanized his thinking. When the nurse had tried to hand T’Pring their small child, she had waved her toward Spock, who had scooped up the small, screaming baby and instantly fallen in love. He would not be separated from her.

He had hovered, in fact, as the birth certificate was filled in, making certain his name was on the correct line. When the nurse asked, “Name?” Spock had repeated his own, just to be clear, and then watched as the nurse shrugged and wrote it into the line for the new baby’s first name. Though he hadn’t meant to name his child after himself, he let it stand: it was one more piece of security, he thought, one more link between them that would be hard for anyone to sever.

In the end, he had consulted a judge who lived in his parents’ neighborhood about his rights and T’Pring’s, and he had found it surprisingly easy to claim sole custody. His father had been the closest Spock had ever seen to screaming mad when he had announced his plan to raise the baby on his own. When Sarek had found out that Spock had claimed full legal custody and responsibility, he had told Spock to leave his sight. That arrangement had suited him well.

T’Pring left for a study abroad year in London exactly three weeks after Po’s birth. By that time, Spock was living in a small cottage on the grounds of The Dragonfly Inn, owned by that same neighborhood judge, retired Admiral Christopher Pike. Pike had offered Spock a job in exchange for room and board when they’d talked over Po’s custody, and Spock had accepted on the spot.

He had stayed on at the Dragonfly for the last 16 years, promoted rapidly from cleaning rooms to front-desk work to bookkeeping to management. Now, Pike lived in Florida for most of the year and only popped up once every season to check on the Inn and its business. Spock ran everything (with significant assistance from his uber-competent concierge, Hikaru Sulu). He made enough money to pay for everything he and his daughter needed. He owned a home and his own car, paid his bills on time, kept the Inn running better than ever and had been a stand-up citizen in Stars Hollow for his entire residence. Yet somehow, one 20-minute visit to his parents’ house had shrunk him back down to his awkward, ostracized freshman self, and he saw at least 130 family dinners in his future to make the feelings worse.

Jim seemed to understand that. He leaned over the table and squeezed Spock’s shoulder, gently. “They’ve got no power over you. Not anymore. They can’t take anything from you that you’ve done, all right? And my fundraiser option is always on the table. Maybe Chekov could figure out one of those Internet fundraiser things for us? Hell, sell your house if you have to. You can crash in the extra room upstairs if you need to.”

Spock smiled, just a bit. “Thank you, but I believe Po would rather quit school altogether than share a bathroom with two men.”

“Fair enough.” Jim let his hand drop. “She’s on her way, I take it? Does she know?” 

“Not yet,” Spock said. “But I suspect she will be agreeable to the notion. I — think she would like to know them.”

“Yeah, I get that," Jim said. His own family had some interesting ups-and-downs, such that Spock knew Jim rarely spoke to his mother, though his brother and sister-in-law were regular visitors. The door chimed, and Jim looked up briefly and called, “Have a seat wherever you’d like, be right there.” He looked Spock in the eye. “You OK? For real.”

“Yes," Spock said. “Po will be happy.”

“And ain’t that what matters in the end,” he said, and then swung up out of the seat to greet the newcomers. Spock had only a few moments to collect his thoughts before the door chimed again, admitting his daughter.

She had Spock’s eyes and face shape, his height (so far) and his long fingers, though her slightly wavy brown hair and thin nose came from T’Pring’s side. Though he knew he was biased, Spock would have challenged anyone in the galaxy to tell him Po wasn’t strikingly beautiful, a combination of curious innocence and sly wit that charmed everyone she met. Today, she wore jeans and a soft brown sweater with a colorful scarf and knee-high boots that had been a present from Auntie Number One at Christmas. She fell into the seat across from his and grinned, eyes wide and open, so truly happy to see him. Spock hoped he never took that cheer for granted.

“I have news,” he said, sipping his coffee, and she nodded.

“Jim left his cup here, so I guessed. He only sits down if you need to talk. Like really talk.” She folded her hands on the tabletop, then leaned forward. “So — just, give me a hint, first. Good talk or bad talk?”

Spock fought an indulgent smile. “No hints. Straight to the point: I saw your grandparents today.”

Her brow furrowed. “I thought Uncle Pike and Auntie Number One went back to Florida.”

“Your actual grandparents,” he said, and Po’s eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline.

“On purpose?”

“Indeed.”

She picked up Jim’s coffee cup. “Why?”

“I asked them to loan me the money to pay for Chilton.”

Po sighed. “Dad. We’ve been over this. It’s — it’s not that important. We don’t have the money, and that’s — it’s fine. I can reapply for scholarship consideration next year, or just really apply myself to my AP courses, and —“

“They have agreed to pay for your schooling,” he said, and he watched the words register.

She set Jim’s cup down, slowly. “All of it?” she whispered.

“Yes.” Spock took a sip of his own coffee to stay calm. He caught Jim’s eye at the bar, and Jim flashed him a thumbs-up and a grin. “They had one condition. They would like us to come over for dinner, once a week, for the length of your schooling.”

“That’s — that’s it? Dad, you’re not joking, right?” He raised one eyebrow. “Of course not. Oh my god. Oh my god! They — you seriously — you did this for me? I know how much you hate them, and I —“

“I do not hate your grandparents,” Spock said, and was quickly faced with his own eyebrow-raised expression. “I have been unhappy with some of our past interactions, yes, but hate is a very strong word.”

“And I bet they will serve some very strong drinks to help you get over whatever word you’d use,” Jim said, sliding a fresh cup of coffee onto the table. “Hi, Po, thought you might prefer one of your own.”

“Yes. Thank you. Oh my — this is amazing. Thank you, Dad, thank you,” she said, and ignoring the coffee for perhaps the first time since Spock had started to allow her to drink it at (3 years ago, a 12th birthday present), stood and threw her arms around him in a hug.

Well. Perhaps, Spock thought, embracing his daughter back as Jim beamed at them, perhaps dinner wouldn’t be so bad.


	2. The Spocks' First Day at Chilton

Chilton was only a twenty-minute drive from Spock’s home. He scheduled thirty-five minutes for the first day’s drive, and he was ready an additional ten minutes ahead of that schedule. Po, who was used to rolling out of bed and down the street to Stars Hollow High, entered the kitchen in her new uniform with seven extra minutes, and they agreed through near-silent communication to spend their extra time on coffee.

“Have we become this predictable?” Spock asked as they walked back to the car, having collected two waiting paper cups of coffee from Jim’s counter. Po carried her cup plus a bag of pastries. Jim — or, more likely, his cook that morning, Jan Rand — had written _Good luck! Kick some snob ass!_ on the side.

“Name a day you haven’t stopped there for coffee in the last ten years,” Po said, climbing into the Jeep.

“The day you were in the hospital for your appendectomy,” Spock said. They pulled onto Main Street, easily navigating through the near-empty streets. He waved one-handed to Christine Chapel as they passed the Veterans’ Center, which was about to open.

“Because Jim brought you coffee, I bet.”

Spock nodded. “I think he sent it with Sulu, actually.”

They arrived with fifteen minutes to spare, plenty of time to find a parking space in one of two visitors’ spots. Spock frowned as he stepped out. “I suddenly feel a bit underdressed,” he said, tugging at the sleeve of his second-best suit.

Po glanced at the student-of-the-month space next to theirs, which was occupied by a late-model Jaguar. “That car’s got no history. Not like Desdemona.”

Spock patted their Jeep as they walked by. “I still regret giving you naming privileges.”

“You should regret giving me Othello to read as a six-year-old,” she said, looping her arm with his as they approached the school.

Inside, the halls buzzed with activity. Several uniformed students eyed Po as they walked in, but she held her head high (though she did drop his arm) as they walked through to the headmaster’s office. As they approached, Spock wondered, again, why this meeting was necessary: was it to intimidate? To welcome?

As he heard his father’s voice float from the room beyond, he realized it was much more likely to be the first.

“Ah, yes, here they are," Sarek said, standing. “Headmaster Archer, this is my son, Spock, and his daughter —“

“Po,” Spock said, before his father could further confuse the issue. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Archer. Father, I wasn’t aware you were joining us this morning.”

“Well, I was stopping by to make sure the finances were in order,” he said, a lie so transparent Spock wasn’t certain why it had needed to be offered, “and I thought I might as well stay to greet you both.” He looked past Spock, and his face changed, just slightly, the bright false diplomacy sliding into something more uncertain. “I wanted to be sure Po’s first day went perfectly, of course.”

“Thank you,” Po said, and Spock was proud that she addressed him directly, head still up.

The meeting was blessedly short, at least for Spock: the headmaster sized him up, seemed to find him wanting in some nondescript but familiar way, and dismissed him and his father to the waiting room while he had a word with Po. Outside, Spock stood watching the students pass while his father faced him, hands crossed before him. “Is it fifteen miles to get here?”

“Thirteen point two,” Spock said, certain his father had also mapped the distance. “A twenty-minute drive, assuming light traffic.”

“One cannot assume that every day, though,” Sarek said. “It seems there are a fair number of before-school activities here. Will early morning transport be a problem?”

“I often rise early to deal with issues from my own workplace,” Spock said. “I do not anticipate that traveling here will be a burden, though, should I ever have a conflict, several of our friends have volunteered to drive Po or lend their vehicles.”

“I see,” Sarek said. The pause, this time, was longer, and Spock looked up at his father to see his brow furrowed in consideration. “I — your mother — well. Should the need ever arise, we have a driver on call. We would be happy —“

“I doubt that will be necessary,” Spock said, perhaps too quickly, but the image of Po arriving by chauffeured limousine made his stomach twist. “Thank you for the offer,” he managed, after a moment.

“No thanks are necessary.”

They watched two students walk by, both carrying backpacks stamped with fashionable labels. Though their uniforms were identical to Po’s, even Spock’s fashion-oblivious mind could see that their shoes were luxury brands, their hair styled expertly, their nails manicured. Perhaps Po would stick out here even in a uniform. He tried to tell himself that could be a good thing.

“Your mother,” Sarek said, voice low, “would also be delighted to be of assistance should Po ever desire to go shopping for clothes or accessories.”

This time, Spock managed to bite back his automatic dismissal only because Po had emerged from the office. She looked a bit worried, a tightness around her eyes that he had only rarely seen. “Po?”

She shrugged. “Just, he said I need a few more extracurriculars. A sport,” she said, looking up at Spock, and he nearly flinched. While he and Po ate well and stayed relatively healthy, neither one of them were prone to fits of athleticism, unless lifting books counted. “He said they have a swim team, golf, lacrosse, uh —“

“I have a set tee time at the nearby Oak Meadows club," Sarek said, “if you would be interested in learning.”

Po looked up, and Spock wondered if this was really the first time that his daughter had ever really seen Sarek as her grandfather — as a relative who had some concern for her. They had never formally met, Spock realized, though each had of course seen photos and been aware of the other. This would certainly be moving too fast to try to form a relationship that —

“That would be great,” Po said. “Really? If it’s OK. I wouldn’t want to be a bother. I really don’t know anything, or have the equipment —“

“It would be my honor," Sarek said gravely, and Spock nearly rolled his eyes. “Shall we say Wednesday after school?”

“Sounds great.”

“I will be here to collect you when classes complete,” he said. “It was agreeable to see you again, Spock, and to meet you, formally, Po. I will see you on Wednesday and, of course, both of you for dinner Friday. I know your grandmother is anticipating it highly.”

Spock just nodded, and he watched his father walk away for only a second before turning to Po. “Is that meeting really to your satisfaction? I can tell him you found a different athletic interest, if you would like. I’m certain Jim and Sulu would be willing to tutor you in the intricacies of American football.”

Po laughed. “It’s fine, Dad. I should get to know him, anyway, right? Show him he’s not totally throwing his money away.” She smiled in a self-deprecating way, and Spock reached out.

“No part of this venture is wasted,” he said, and her smile warmed slightly. “Now, you should go to class to find out exactly how well you’ll fit in. I’ll see you at the end of the day.”

“Yeah. OK. Thanks, Dad. See you.”

She disappeared into the uniformed throng so quickly that Spock was unprepared. It didn’t hit him like it had in Kindergarten, but it was still a parting, still difficult. He was still distracted by it when he emerged into the sunlight, shuffling his keys hand-to-hand as he walked to the car.

A tall, slim woman was digging through her purse next to the student-of-the-month Jaguar. Spock paused and checked the sign again, curious, because she was clearly at least a dozen years too old to park there, and she caught him looking.

“Five years as a senior and I finally got this space,” she said, grinning. The smile cemented two things: she was quite attractive, and she was definitely closer to Spock’s age than Po’s.

“I see the headmaster wasn’t lying about Chilton’s goal-oriented student body,” Spock said.

Her smile broadened, and she gave him a quick up-and-down look that made him somehow feel better about his second-best suit. “You’re new, huh?”

“First day, in fact,” he said. “Do you have a child in attendance here?”

“Two,” she said. She pulled her keys from her purse with a huff of surprise. “One of whom locked her spare keys inside the car she borrowed for the day.” She unlocked the front door, reached inside, and plucked another set of keys from the seat. “Genius doesn’t always come with common sense, I guess.”

“That has also been my experience,” Spock admitted. The woman walked toward him, and Spock tried not to stare appreciatively at her curve-hugging dress or long, bare legs. “Thank you for the welcome, Mrs. —“

“Ms,” she said, “at least since the divorce, and you can call me Stephanie, anyway.”

“Spock,” he said, offering his hand. She shook it, then handed him a card.

“If you want to talk about the school,” she said, “let me know. My kids have been through it all here, and I know it can be hard to decode. Or, you know, if you want to talk about non-kid things, I’d be fine with that, too.”

Her smile was warm, her hand lingered on his arm for a moment too long, and Spock was tempted. He slipped the card into his pocket. “Thank you,” he said. “I appreciate the offer and the welcome.”

As he drove home, he reflected that he’d at least made the impression he wanted — of a calm, together, and successful parent — on one person he’d met that day.

The Inn was swamped that morning as they prepared for a double wedding. People had been checking in and out and requesting non-stop changes to assigned rooms as they shifted to be closer to one block of guests or the other, leaving the desk staff and housekeepers scrambling. He had left Sulu in charge at the desk, so things were fine — but they were still hectic.

“Two worried guests on the fourth floor,” Sulu said, sliding over a pink note. “Both would like to speak with the manager.” He managed not to roll his eyes as he said it, but Spock caught it in his slightly-too-bored tone.

“Of course," Spock said, smoothing his coat. This, at least, he was good at. Most of the time, guests simply wanted to know that they had been heard, that someone understood their frustration and was sorry for it. Most of the time, he could fix some small part of their unhappiness and explain the reasons for the rest. Spock actually excelled in these small feats of diplomacy, something he would make certain to never mention to Sarek. At least the two unhappy guests would take some time — time he wouldn’t spend worrying about Po’s first day.

At his lunch time — which fell much after the restaurant’s rush — he ventured into the kitchen. Their head chef was a joy and a terror to watch in the kitchen, and Spock stood at the edge of the room just to observe for a moment before entering. Nyota Uhura had been one of his first hires when he had become manager. She’d been working for them off and on before then, doing special events and some catering, and they’d always gotten along well. Once she’d taken over the kitchen, the restaurant had flourished, bringing the Inn to an entirely new level.

In addition, she’d been a welcome addition to Spock’s life. Though they’d briefly flirted and Spock had considered pursuing her romantically (or at least sitting back while she pursued him), he was glad, now, that they had consciously chosen to be friends — good friends, best friends — instead. He relied on her humor and keen understanding of human behavior to get through the day, often. Today was no exception.

“You should definitely let your mom take Po shopping,” Nyota said as Spock finished his lunch. “It’s a bonding thing.”

“Perhaps,” Spock said, feeling a bit silly for his objections. “I just do not want to set up false hopes or expectations for Po, lest these relationships do not work out.”

“Understandable," Nyota said, sifting flour into a large ceramic bowl. “But one shopping trip isn’t going to set up an expectation, not for Po. You’ve raised her well.”

“Let us hope.” Spock checked his watch. Another hour and a half before he could plausibly go get her. “Shall we talk menu?”

“Sure,” Nyota said, wiping her hands on a cloth over her shoulder, “and then you can sneak out for coffee at Jim’s, hmm?”

He agreed.

Jim wasn’t alone when Spock arrived. His sister-in-law, Aurelian, sat at the counter, and the two of them were chatting. The diner was empty otherwise. Spock took a stool next to Aurie at Jim’s wave and accepted a coffee. “So, how was the first day?”

Spock described what he’d seen and heard, and Jim and Aurie nodded along. “Yeah, you totally gotta let her go shopping,” Jim said.

“I had come to the same conclusion,” Spock said, frowning. “I’m sure my mother will be pleased.”

“Can I ask — what’s with your mom?” Aurie asked, leaning on one elbow. “I mean — I know why you and your dad don’t get along, but — your mom sounds OK.” Aurie was older than Jim (and Spock) by about ten years, like Jim’s older brother, Sam, but dressed as though she had lived through the 60s. Today, she wore a red scoop-necked top with wide, fringed sleeves that fluttered when she moved her hands. A matching headband held back her curly blond hair. She sold jewelry made from found objects — polished rocks, old silverware, interesting tinfoil — at fairs and markets around the county. Sam ran a bicycle repair shop. They weren’t around constantly, but Aurie in particular tended to drop in at Jim’s once a week to catch up and grab a bite. Their relationship was warm, now, after some years of distance. Though Jim gave her a look, Spock didn’t mind the question.

“My mother is certainly a warmer presence than my father,” Spock said, accepting a refill when Jim offered, “though our falling out was over the same issue. She was away, translating for the UN women’s rights commission, when my father and I parted ways. Upon her return, she did seek me out.” He could remember that meeting too well, if he tried. There had been no comfortable Jim’s Diner to meet in then, so they had instead met for coffee at Al’s Pancake House. Watching his mother slide into a red vinyl booth, Spock hadn’t been sure which of them was more uncomfortable. “She did not, however, ask me to come home, or even suggest that I should. I believe she thought I would somehow grow out of wanting to be Po’s full-time father.” Jim laughed, though there had certainly been times during the long first six months when Spock had wondered if he’d done the right thing. “She and my father both believed that I had made a grave error in choosing not to stay in school and in choosing not to put Po up for adoption. After that meeting, we did not speak again for several years.”

“Wow,” Aurie said. “What happened then?”

Jim smirked. “She found out where he eats lunch.”

That had been a particularly awkward conversation, between Jim and Spock. It was technically true that Spock and his mother hadn’t spoken in those five years, but it wasn’t for lack of effort on his mother’s part. Spock had been deeply hurt that she had apparently taken his father’s side in the disagreement, that his mother who had always pledged her undying loyalty and support had instead turned her back and let him leave her home, rather than helping him through the hardest time of his life. He had refused all of her attempts at contact. She had sent letters, some with money, some with gifts for Po. She had ordered deliveries of diapers and formula to the Inn’s front desk. She had tried waiting there in the lobby, until Spock had finally asked Chris Pike to explain to her that if she didn’t leave, Spock would lose his job.

And then she’d discovered that Spock liked to eat at Jim’s. Somehow, she must have understood that, had he seen her there even once, he would have fled and avoided the place and, in doing, lost a new but increasingly dear friend. So she’d spoken to Jim, instead, when Spock wasn’t there.

“She wrote me a check that bought his coffee for two years,” Jim said. “Well — she tried to buy his coffee. I’d already given him the first cup free, so I just donated the rest of the money to the vet center and called it good.”

Aurie smiled. She had two sons with Sam. “She was trying to take care of you, in the only way she could.”

“Perhaps,” Spock allowed. He still wasn’t entirely certain of his mother’s motives. Maybe the upcoming dinners would give him a chance to find out more. “Ah. I did think of one other element of today’s visit that you might find amusing.” He told them about the mother in the parking lot, watching Aurie’s grin broaden as he described the come on. Jim smiled, too, but there was something a bit off about it.

“So — you going to call her?”

Spock scoffed. “I hardly think it wise to get involved with another parent at Po’s school at this juncture. She’s only just started. I would never do anything to make this a more challenging transition.”

“Oh,” Jim said, and his smile relaxed. “Good. I mean, that’s — that’s smart. Plus, you know, how classy is it to hit on someone in the parking lot? Jeez, she doesn’t know, you could be a serial killer or a creep or something.”

Spock raised an eyebrow, and Aurie stifled a laugh. “Are you certain that I’m not a creep or serial killer?”

“Well, I was until you gave me that look," Jim said, then hurried off to fill other coffees around the diner.

Aurie patted his arm. “Take it easy on him, OK?” she said.

“On Jim?” Spock said, glancing over to where he was now chatting up two customers. “Is he not feeling well?”

“Oh, he’s just fine,” Aurie said, and turned away as Jim approached.

Spock had little time to consider why Jim might need special care. He left quickly after that, walking the five easy blocks back to the Inn, and dove back into the busy wedding madness. He worked straight through until his evening manager arrived, at which point he said a quick so-long to Nyota and Sulu and then climbed into his car in the staff lot.

It wouldn’t start.

“Aye,” Montgomery Scott, the town’s best (and only) auto mechanic, said with a sigh twenty minutes later. Spock had called him after an unsuccessful attempt to jump start the Jeep, and he’d been nearby. “Well, it’s likely the alternator, though I’m not sure I like the look of your starter, either. Won’t know what’s the full story until I’ve got her back at the shop. She’s not goin’ anywhere tonight, though, I’m sorry to say.”

Spock rubbed his face with both hands. “It’s Po’s first day at school," he said. “I am due to pick her up in thirty-five minutes, and it’s a thirty- minute drive.”

“I’d give you my loaner," Scotty said, “but I already loaned her. Maybe Nyota could —“

“She needs her vehicle to deliver the wedding favors to the church.” Sulu’s husband dropped him off each day. That left Jim — Jim, who drove a ’66 Mustang Convertible he’d lovingly rebuilt by hand, a legacy of his father’s, that he never, ever, ever let anyone else drive. “Thank you,” he said. “Please tow it to your shop at your convenience. I will, of course, be available for the bill —“

“Aye, I’ll give you a call in the morning. Sorry ‘bout this.”

Spock nodded. He cinched his messenger bag up and started back to the diner, hoping Jim might not be too busy. Perhaps he would be able to hand off to Rand or Chekov just for a bit, just long enough to drive Spock to Chilton and back.

When he stepped through the front door, though, Spock could see this wouldn’t be the case. Every table was full of women wearing purple clothing and red hats. He had forgotten it was Red Hat Society day, one of the busiest afternoons at the cafe — and one he usually avoided.

Jim smiled as he walked in and pointed toward the counter. “Standing room only. Did you forget?”

“I, ah," Spock said, darting around a particularly wide-brimmed hat, “no. I had come to ask your assistance, but —“

“Yeah? Hey, you ladies had decaf, right? Give me just another minute, I’m brewing some fresh to go with those beautiful flowers in your hats. You pick those yourself?” Jim’s smile lit up the table, and Spock wondered whether he would make more from the food or the tips today. “OK, so,” Jim said, steering Spock to the counter, “favor. Yes. What’s on your mind?”

“My car has unfortunately stopped working,” he said. Jim frowned, nodding, as he wrote something on his order pad and then whirled to stick it on the spinner. Rand yelled an acknowledgement of the order, and Jim turned to punch a button on the coffeemaker. There was no way he could leave right now, Spock realized. “I — it is of no importance. I will figure something out.”

“Spock,” Jim said, and then pressed a set of keys into his hand. “Just take mine. I trust you. I know you’ll bring it back in one piece.” Spock may have stood with his mouth open for a second too long because Jim’s expression shifted to concern. “Unless — you can drive a stick, right?”

“Yes,” Spock said, “of course. Thank you. I — thank you.”

Jim shrugged. “First day. I’m not gonna let her stand there waiting, am I? Now get going.”

Which is how Spock managed to actually fit in to the pick-up line at Chilton for Po’s first day and, in so doing, earn his second and third set of call-me cards from single mothers at her school.

Within an hour, Jim’s car was safely settled back into its garage behind the diner, Po was ensconced across from him at one of Jim’s tables describing with eager enthusiasm her first day at Chilton, and everything felt pretty right in Spock’s world. Worth it, he thought, as Po described the computer and coding lab she had toured. This is all worth it.


	3. A Wrench in the Works

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trouble comes in twos: A broken car and the definition of a "pre-date"

“Aye, she’s definitely dead.” Scotty scrubbed a hand over what hair he had left, his hat in the other hand, standing on the floormat at the edge of Nyota’s kitchen. “I gave her all that I’ve got, but — it would cost more to resuscitate her than it would to get somethin’ new.”

“I have no doubts that your efforts were extraordinary," Spock said. It had been two days since the initial failure, and Spock thought Scotty had worked on little else since then. 

“‘M sorry, Spock. I know you loved her.”

“Attachment to a motor vehicle is illogical,” Spock said, accepting a plate with a warm muffin from Nyota as she swirled past. “Yet I find I am rather sad to hear this news.”

“Of course you are, sweetie,” Nyota said. “That’s the car we took that epic Disney World road trip in, the one you taught Po to drive in. It’s got memories.”

“And, sadly, it’s got no working engine.” Scotty shifted. “Is that fresh coffee, by any —“

“Oh, fine,” Nyota said, “but if I see a speck of grease on my counters, you’re sleeping in the garage tonight.”

“I’ve heard worse threats,” he said, but Spock noticed Scotty skirted carefully around all of the countertops. Nyota and Scotty made for a strange couple, Spock often thought, but they also somehow fit. They made each other laugh and shared a similar organization of minds, a similar value for single-minded dedication to a craft.

“You know who would be good with car shopping?” Nyota said, already mixing a new bowl.

Scotty raised one hand. “Ah, me? Seein’ as though I’m an expert and all?”

“Jim,” Nyota continued as though he hadn’t spoken. Spock raised an eyebrow. Scotty started to speak, but she glared over at him, and he suddenly straightened up.

“Ah, I mean, she’s right. I’ve got — you know, plenty to do at the shop, and I — Jim’s good, he likes cars,” he said, and then stuffed his whole muffin into his mouth.

“Mm-hm,” Nyota said. She turned her full attention on Spock. “You need one soon, right? What are you even driving in the meantime?”

Spock frowned. “My parents have offered the use of their chauffeur to take Po to school.” Nyota’s mouth formed an “o,” though she didn’t speak. “Quite. So I would prefer to get this settled soon.”

“How’d you get to work, then?” Scotty asked.

“Bicycle,” Spock said, standing and straightening his jacket. “It was slightly more challenging than I had remembered.”

“So not ‘just like riding a bike,' then?” Nyota said, and Spock rolled his eyes.

“If you’ll excuse me —“

“Call Jim!” she shouted, and Spock nodded as he left. It wasn’t a bad idea, really. Jim did likely know more about cars than Spock did. Actually, Spock was willing to bet that almost everyone knew more about cars than he did, as he had chosen his last one based solely upon desperation and availability. He had enough money now to select something better, but he had no idea what “better” might entail. He stepped into the office behind the front desk for a moment and sent Jim a quick text message: _Would you be available to assist me with car shopping this evening?_

He paused, then realized it was silly to expect a swift reply. Jim wouldn’t check his phone before his afternoon slow time. Spock pocketed his own phone and then joined Sulu at the counter.

“Any issues?” he asked quietly.

“None so far,” Sulu said. “Smooth sailing, as usual. I finished the inventory update, as well. The automatic billing system is still working exactly as planned.”

Spock nodded. They had been slowly adding technology to the Inn, and would soon be more advanced than most of their peers. Guests could now order room service through text-messaging, instant message with their concierge, and even reserve video-conferencing lounges. Sulu’s innovations extended as well to their website, which now had more features than even Spock fully knew how to navigate, though it still presented the same serene resort-like pictures that it always had. “Very good,” Spock said, nodding. “If you need time to complete your studies, I do not mind watching the desk for a while.”

“Thanks,” Sulu said, smiling, and retreated to the office with a textbook. Spock had been encouraging Sulu to pursue his interest in aeronautical engineering almost since the moment he had learned of it. Sulu’s husband, Ben, was a band teacher at the local high school, and between them their income was not high enough to pay out-right for Sulu to attend classes full-time, but Spock had helped him cobble together a few scholarships and grants. He studied some during their downtimes, now, though he was still a conscientious and fastidious worker.

Spock had, himself, been an excellent student through high school, and had long believed he would pursue a science and research career. In fact, as a teenager, he had often dreamed of becoming a professor at one of the many major universities in the northeast. His failure to even graduate from high school had brought those plans to a screeching halt. Though he was proud of what he had accomplished and had, in fact, earned an associate’s degree in hospitality management while working full-time and raising Po, he did sometimes wonder how that alternate path would have worked out for him. Would he have been comfortable in an academic environment? Would he have succeeded?

The needless melancholy lingered even as he left the desk that afternoon for his now-habitual walk to Jim’s for coffee. Though he could not go in person to collect Po from school, he would still be waiting for her arrival. Besides, Jim had a way of cheering him up: good coffee.

“Thank you,” Spock said, accepting a mug as he sat at the counter. “I don’t suppose you saw my text message earlier?”

“Left my phone upstairs,” Jim said with a shrug. “Why, what’s up?”

“I need assistance in shopping for a new car,” Spock said, “and you were recommended specifically as someone who might be helpful.”

Jim raised his eyebrows. “Not Scotty?”

“He is apparently busy,” Spock said, “or possibly not allowed out of the house by Nyota. I chose not to pry.”

“Wise.” Jim nodded. “Sure, I can help. You wanna take a look this evening? Once Po’s back? I can hand off to Rand or Hadley for the dinner shift. Wednesday’s usually slow anyway.”

“Yes, that would — “ Spock paused. It was Wednesday. “Actually, Po will not be joining us, I think.”

“No? Already in some after-school thing?”

“In a manner of speaking. She’s golfing with my father this afternoon.”

Jim laughed. “Wow. That’s pretty swift indoctrination.”

“Indeed.” Spock tried not to let his dismay show on his face. He dearly wished he could have driven Po to her appointment with his father, or at least have waited in the parking lot for them to be finished.

“Do you golf?”

“No,” Spock said, shortly. “My father was not a golfer when I was young. His chosen game was tennis.”

Jim nodded. He waved as a couple left their table at the window, but he made no move to begin clearing it. “So, you play tennis, then?”

“Not anymore.” Spock drained his coffee in one swift gulp. “Shall I meet you here later?”

“Sure,” Jim said, “or, no, wait, actually, I’ll come pick you up. Five OK? I gotta return a book Sulu loaned me, anyway.”

“Certainly. I’ll see you at 5.”

He left, knowing it was abrupt, but he wasn’t ready to talk about his childhood at the moment, not while he was worried about Po. Quickly, hardly thinking, he pulled out his phone and sent her a text message: _I hope your day is going well. I love you. Dad._ She wouldn’t be able to check until the end of the school day (he hoped), but at least she would know he was thinking of her.

 

* * *

 

Po did text him back as soon as school had concluded, letting him know she’d had a good day and was looking forward to “hitting the links with grandpa.” 

Spock returned: _Links? First day and you’ve already picked up the jargon, I see._

 _You know me_ , she wrote back, _always a fast learner. Oh, he’s here, gotta go before anyone else sees this ridiculous car._

Spock returned to his work, trying his best not to worry, and the time crawled by. He knew Jim had arrived at the Inn when he heard delighted laughter from the front lobby. Jim and Sulu got along famously. Jim’s experience in the military had included significant training in computer systems, and he and Sulu could chat for hours about technology. They also, along with Chekov, played an elaborate multi-player video game that Spock had yet to see the value in. This was perhaps because he did not own a single device capable of playing _Star Ship Enterprise_ and felt a little left out when they discussed it.

Spock was unsurprised to see that Chekov was with them. He and Sulu had signed up for the same advanced physics course at the university, so he had been around the Inn more often to arrange study sessions. “It’s fine,” Chekov was saying as Jim grinned down at him, looking at a tablet on the corner of the front desk. “My code is like shadow. They will never know what hit them.”

Jim laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “Just take it from an expert on this, OK? What looks like innovation sometimes to us is an awful lot like cheating, unless you have a creative professor.”

“I bet Admiral Marcus will understand,” Sulu said, and Jim frowned for just a moment.

“Marcus?” he asked. “Your professor is Peter Marcus?”

“Yes. You know him?”

“I, ah. Kind of. Long time ago,” he said, then shook his head and looked up. His smile returned. “Hey, Spock. You ready to go?”

Chekov turned and saw Spock, and his eyebrows jumped to the top of his head. “You are going out? Together? I am sorry, I would not have delayed Jim if I had known you were expecting —“

“Settle down, kid,” Jim said, squeezing Chekov’s shoulder again before stepping away. “I’m giving him a lift to go car shopping. No toes stepped on, all right?”

Spock was surprised by the disappointment in Chekov’s face, but he shrugged it off. He said good-night to Sulu and wondered, idly, as he followed Jim out to his car, whether Chekov had developed a crush on Jim. It seemed plausible. Jim was certainly an attractive man, and his intelligence was on full display in his discussions with Sulu. Spock himself often listened in just because he found Jim’s ease with complex computer coding alluring. However, his friendship with Jim was such that he had no desire to make things awkward by admitting this. Surely, in a friendship as intimate as theirs, it wasn’t unusual to form some physical attraction and intellectual admiration. That was likely what had happened for Chekov — who might have also suffered from a bit of hero worship toward Jim, as he had taken him under his wing at the diner when Chekov had needed work to support himself through school.

Spock glanced over and saw Jim looked lost in thought, too, as they walked toward the back of the lot where he had parked his car. “Are you troubled by something?” he asked.

“Me? No,” Jim said, then shrugged. He unlocked Spock’s door, then went around to his own. “Just, I hadn’t heard the name Peter Marcus in a while. Blast from the past, a bit.”

“Did you take classes from him?”

“No,” Jim said, starting the car. “I dated his daughter while I was at the Academy, before I shipped out. Carol.”

And there, of course, was the other reason that Spock had never expressed his own attraction to Jim: Jim was almost exclusively interested in women, and many, many women were interested in Jim. “I see,” he said. “A serious relationship?”

“Sometimes,” Jim said. He turned onto the narrow highway that would, in 10 minutes, take them to the next town, Bridgewater, where there were a few large car lots. “Hey, speaking of the past — what happened earlier today?”

Spock frowned. “You will need to be more specific,” he said, although he knew exactly to what Jim referred.

“No, I won’t,” Jim said. “You left pretty quickly. Are you worried about Po and your dad?”

“Not exactly,” Spock said. “I have no doubt they will both comport themselves admirably.”

“Wow, you get super formal when you’re nervous,” Jim said, “and that could almost be engraved on linen. So what gives? He’s not a good golf teacher?”

Spock sighed. “When I was seven, my father felt it was time I began to learn tennis. He taught me himself. It did not go well.”

“Didn’t go well, like you suck at tennis? Or didn’t go well like you beat him at his own game, or…?”

The memory still felt fresh, when Spock thought back. He had been terrified from the very start of the lesson. At the time, his father had been traveling or away for most of the week, and his rare appearances brought mostly stiff and disapproving surveys of Spock’s own work or behavior during the week. Amanda often traveled with him, leaving Spock to the care of a nanny for days at a time. He still wasn’t entirely clear on why he hadn’t been placed at a boarding school, like so many of the diplomatic cohort children had been. It had likely been his mother’s desire for him to experience the native culture. Whatever it was, Spock had spent most of his childhood speaking the wrong language, constantly behind in classes because of that, ignored or avoided by his peers, and with a constant fear of disappointing anyone.

“He found my hand-eye coordination to be lacking, and set up a practice regimen that put us on the courts every day after school,” Spock said. Outside, he watched the trees skim past, thick and tall and immovable. After a half-year of bullying at his then-school, coming home to a daily regimen of the same treatment from his own father had been somewhat destabilizing for Spock. “It is the only time in my life that I have ever resorted to physical violence.”

“You — wait, you hit your dad?”

“No,” Spock says, not even able to imagine the consequences for that action. “I was seven. I hit a classmate who had the unfortunate luck of echoing some of my father’s criticisms in his daily round of taunting.”

“Jesus.” Jim sighed.

“I do not believe he would behave similarly with Po,” Spock said. “However —“

“You’re nervous. And now I’m even nervous,” Jim said. They slowed as they entered town, and Jim pulled the car over next to Mr. Higgins’ House of Cars. “You up to this, still? We could look online instead.”

“I will be fine,” Spock said, and then he touched Jim’s arm, lightly. “Thank you for coming with me, by the way.”

“Anytime.”

They browsed the lots at Higgins’ and then at Bridge City Motors, but nothing caught Spock’s eye or attention. Jim shrugged when Spock said, for the fifth time, that he wasn’t really interested in the next model the salesman had suggested.

“There’s one more place," Jim said, as they walked to his car, “but, uh, I gotta give you a warning first.”

“Oh?”

“I kind of know the owner.”

Spock looked over, fascinated at Jim’s blush. “Kind of?”

“We went to high school together,” Jim said, “and, uh, maybe messed around a little back then. And, OK, maybe once or twice while I was home on leave, but nothing since then. I think he’s maybe even married. But — he’s sort of an asshole.”

“Ah,” Spock said, voice much calmer than he felt, “so the owner is your ex-boyfriend?”

“I’m not sure we were ever that formal,” Jim said, “but — yeah. That’s Gary.”

“Gary,” Spock said.

Jim gave him a long look. “Uh — you OK?”

“Yes,” Spock said, “though I fail to understand why we are considering the wares of a man with some serious character flaws.”

Jim laughed and shrugged. “Because he’s the only game left in town.” He popped his door open. “Tell you what, fifteen minutes, and then if there’s nothing here I’ll buy dinner for your trouble, all right?”

“I will accept your charity,” Spock said, joining him on the other side, “only because I am so near to the second-largest expenditure of my adult life.”

As they walked across the lot toward the used cars, Jim said, “You’re not going to believe what I see in the corner.” 

“I do believe it.” They were already standing in front of the identical model of Spock’s own Jeep by the time the salesman found them.

 

* * *

 

“Dad, oh my god, you went on a date with Jim?”

Spock set down his coffee and stared across at his daughter. She had a spoonful of ice cream halfway to her mouth, her eyes comically wide. “I did no such thing.”

“You asked him to help you car shop and he bought you dinner,” she said.

“Which is what friends — good friends — do.”

She continued to stare, though she did eat the ice cream. It was coffee-flavored, an expensive brand they usually only indulged in during times of great celebration, stress, or emotion. Spock hadn’t bought any since T’Pring’s last visit, but he had asked Jim to stop at the market just in case Po’s golf date had gone poorly.

Po’s golf date had gone just fine, though, and had actually ended with Po having dinner at the country club with Spock’s father. She seemed quietly pleased by the entire affair, and though he desperately wanted to, Spock had chosen so far not to pry or request details.

Po, of course, had no such delicacy. “Did you at least kiss him goodnight?”

Spock rolled his eyes. “There was no kissing.”

“Aww.” She dipped her spoon back in. “Well, all right. It wasn’t a date.”

“As I’ve said.”

“More like a pre-date.”

“Did you perhaps hit your head during your round of golf today?” Spock asked. He wished he would have spooned himself a bowl of the ice cream, now. Po had known he was bisexual with a heavy preference toward men since she’d been able to understand any element of human sexuality. She had quizzed him ruthlessly over who he found attractive in Stars Hollow for years, partly out of a kind desire, Spock thought, to see him paired up in the same way her friends’ parents were. Partly, though, he thought his daughter just enjoyed seeing him squirm, since she was one of only two people to whom he had ever confessed an attraction to Jim that went beyond a mere admiration of his considerable physical attributes.

And, yes, those attributes had been on excellent display that evening as they had dined at Manuela’s, a Mexican restaurant in Bridgewater that passed for slightly upscale. They rarely shared meals that weren’t at Jim’s own diner, which had marked this one as special, but otherwise the conversation had been as easy, as comfortable, as amusing and challenging as ever.

He failed to mention to Po how Jim had turned to him in the parking lot, fumbling for his keys, and said, “This was fun. We should do it again,” and how Spock had too quickly volunteered that he would still like Jim’s assistance finding a car. They would likely spend the next evening together.

“I value his friendship.” Spock emphasized the final word.

Po sighed. “You are never going to buy a clue, are you?”

“Tell me more about your golf time. Do you think you’ll try it again?”

“Yeah,” she said, looking down at her ice cream. Spock thought he detected a small curl at the edge of her lip, a smile she was trying to hide. “He was nice, actually. He — oh, you’re totally going to take this the wrong way, but, he kind of reminded me of you?”

Spock blinked. “I am actually not sure how to take that.”

“Just something about the voice, I think,” she said, and shrugged. “Anyway. It was fine. He’s pretty good, and he gave me some solid advice. Not about the clothing, though, god, did I want to ask about that, but I didn’t. I mean, if wanting to wear that much plaid is genetic, just don’t tell me. I’ll hope it skips two generations. But, you know, general golf rules, guidelines. It was good. He’s — if it’s OK, we, maybe it could be a standing thing?”

“Of course,” he said, “on one condition. Should you at any time feel uncomfortable about this, you have only to let me know.”

“Dad, of course,” she said, and squeezed his forearm gently. “Hey, can I get the same agreement from you about Jim? If anything does happen there —“

“Perhaps you should put more ice cream into your mouth before it melts,” Spock said, and she spared him a mischievous grin before following his advice.

 

* * *

 

Of course, the next day, he couldn’t take his mind off of his daughter’s words. As he pedaled to work, past Jim’s diner, he wondered if Jim had in fact intended to imply that he might be open to a different type of dinner. Had he considered Spock’s invitation to be a step forward in their relationship? Was that a step that Jim even desired? What exactly was a “pre-date,” anyway?

It had been literally years since Spock had attempted any kind of actual dating. There had been no time for it when Po was very young. He had barely had time then to breathe, much less to look for potential partners. Once she’d entered school, he’d met a few other single parents, but he had demurred on pursuing anyone for romantic potential. He envisioned a breakup that wounded the hearts of not only the adults but their children. Since then, he’d been on two unsuccessful blind dates, thanks to Nyota, and had a series of dates over a few months with a stock broker living in New York. Their quasi-long-distance relationship had not been satisfying to either of them.

The only other sexual relationship he’d had since Po’s birth had been two regrettable nights with T’Pring when she had returned home for a long Easter weekend when Po was six. Spock tried to think about that as little as possible. In the aftermath, he had felt more alone than ever — not because he had expected anything from T’Pring, really, but because the fling had felt like a door he’d always slightly kept open being firmly, if gently, shut.

So maybe he was out of practice. It seemed possible that Jim had been flirting with him a bit the night before. When the salesman — not Gary, it turned out, but someone much younger — had approached them about the Jeep, Jim had rested a hand on Spock’s shoulder and let it stay there through half of their early conversation. As they’d left, disappointed because the Jeep on display had some issues that would likely cost too much to fix, Jim had briefly lay a comforting hand on his back, assuring Spock that they’d find the right vehicle.

“Good morning,” Eva Bracket-Hannity, the Inn’s early receptionist, called as he walked in. “All’s been well overnight.”

“Thank you.” He took the stack of messages she handed him, placed them on his desk, and stared down for a moment. Work mode, he thought, but the thrill of nervousness wouldn’t leave his stomach. This was irrational. It was illogical to worry about whether Jim might have been flirting with him. Spock had no intention of acting on his own feelings for Jim. He simply couldn’t afford to lose Jim’s friendship.

The memos did not look any easier to tackle, even after that pep talk. Spock was nothing if not diligent, however, and he applied himself to taking care of the questions and concerns as swiftly as possible. An hour later, he jotted a final note on who he would need to follow up with that afternoon, then walked toward the kitchen. The clang of pans told him breakfast was likely mostly over, with cleanup underway and lunch prep already starting. Luckily, there was always coffee to be had, and he wove around one of Nyota’s assistants to find his way to the machine.

“How did the car shopping go?” Nyota asked over a sizzling skillet.

“Less than satisfactory,” he said as he poured himself a large mug.

“Aw. Wait, does that mean you didn’t find a car, or that you and Jim didn’t get along?”

“I did not find a suitable vehicle," Spock said, “though I did briefly get my hopes up over a very similar Jeep.” Nyota offered a frown of sympathy. As her assistant walked toward the heavy-duty dishwasher at the back, Spock said, “I had no complaints about the company.”

Nyota grinned. “I didn’t figure. Beats car shopping with Scotty, I’d think — at least for you."

Spock paused as he stirred in cream, wondering how many details to reveal. “We went to dinner afterward at Manuela’s.”

“Ooh, did you get the crab tacos? Those are so amazing. I wish she’d share her spice mix. I think there’s orange peel and… maybe fennel. Gah. Drives me nuts.” She flipped the circles in the pan, which Spock could not identify. Beets? Beef? He chose not to ask. Better to be surprised. “I bet Jim had the chimichanga.”

“Yes,” Spock said, knowing Nyota’s disdain but balancing it against the pure joy in Jim’s face as the tray-sized plate had been placed before him. “With gusto.”

She laughed. “That’s a good look on him.”

Spock agreed. He glanced around but found Nyota’s assistant still absent. “May I solicit your advice on something? It’s about something Po said, which I have never heard mentioned before.”

“What’s that?” Nyota lifted the skillet off the heat but did not remove the beets (he was almost positive that was what they were).

“Is there such a thing as pre-dating?”

Nyota raised an eyebrow, then dusted her hands off on her apron. “Like some kind of tryout?” Spock shrugged. “Why, is she going on a pre-date?”

“No,” Spock said, then ruthlessly paged back through their every conversation this week. She had mentioned no one from her school in any way that would have implied a more-than-friendly interest. “No,” he said again. “But she did, ah, accuse me of — she suggested that perhaps Jim and I —“

“Oh,” Nyota said, then turned to pour herself some coffee. When she turned back, she looked thoughtful. “I don’t think Jim would have thought of last night as a date,” she said. “Do you?”

“No.” Spock felt certain of that, at least. The entire outing had been within the frame of friendship. “But upon further reflection, there were elements of our interactions last night that could be interpreted as… more than typical friendship.”

“Interesting.” She smiled, a broad, bright smile. “I don’t suppose you’re going to ask him, are you?”

“If he believes we’ve been pre-dating?” Spock asked, around a mouthful of coffee.

“If he wants to go on a real date!"

Spock sighed. “I believe we’ve been over this.”

“What we’ve been over,” she said, wagging a finger at him, “is your frankly dismal and certainly undeserved history of loneliness and a really shitty ex, resulting in a completely illogical reluctance to pursue the possibility of happiness with someone you genuinely adore.” She sipped her coffee, and he was reminded, again, that she’d been a successful communication director for a statewide senate candidate before realizing culinary arts were her true love. “I think it’s high time to revisit that conversation and that viewpoint through the lens of: hey! He might just like you, too.”

“Certainly, he likes me,” Spock said, standing a bit straighter. “Jim, as I believe you know, likes everyone. Sometimes, he _really_ likes everyone.”

Nyota rolled her eyes, but she rested a hand on his forearm in a gentle, friendly way. “You know he doesn’t deserve that reputation anymore.”

“I do," Spock allowed, though he also knew that women tended to leave Jim their phone numbers tucked under their generous tips, and that Jim and Leonard McCoy sometimes disappeared for dissolute weekends in the city that likely involved meeting up with some of those same women.

“I know you have a lot going on right now," Nyota murmured, “so I’m willing to put a pause on revisiting this, at least until you’re settled into this routine with your mom and dad. But sometime soon —“

“So noted," Spock said, “and appreciated.”

The memos were still waiting when he returned to his office, but suddenly, attending to work sounded like a fine use of his time.

The day slid by quickly in the usual minutiae. Spock was a bit disappointed to realize that he wouldn’t have a reason and probably wouldn’t have time to go to Jim’s Diner for his afternoon coffee — Po would be dropped at the Inn by her grandparents’ driver after school, and he had promised to stop in at Scotty’s to talk about a possible loaner. He wondered if he should send Jim a message, then dismissed the idea; he had never had to mark his absence before, and Jim would likely find it strange if he started doing so now.

Therefore, at 3:30, with an hour to go before he expected Po, Spock walked to Scotty’s shop. A three-colored, rusted hatchback sat in front, which Spock recognized as Scotty’s loaner. He eyed it in equal parts hope and dread as he walked in to the shop. Inside, it smelled like grease and oil, rubber, and a bit of clean chemical paint. Scotty was leaning against the small counter where he did business and, to Spock’s surprise, Jim leaned against the other side. They were grinning as he walked in, as Scotty finished a joke, “— and the oil pan came clean off!” making them both gasp with laughter.

“Good afternoon,” Spock said, standing two feet away from Jim at the counter.

“Hey, Spock,” Jim said, “glad you’re here. Scotty and I were just talking about your car.”

“Not, I hope, the oil pan?”

“Hm? Oh no, that’s, ah, personal,” Scotty said, and Spock then truly did not want to know. If Nyota had tried car repair — well, it was best not to pry. “Anyway, Jim was telling me about this jeep you found at Mitchell’s lot, and the two of us were scheming a bit, and, well, one thing led to another —“

“We think Scotty could drop the engine from that one into yours and make it go again,” Jim said, shrugging. “So you’d have your ideal old-new car again.”

“There might even be a few more pieces I could scavenge, really make her run like new,” Scotty said, rubbing his hands together. “If you’re up for a bit of an adventure, that is.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “What would this adventure cost, do you estimate?”

“Less than almost everything else we looked at,” Jim said. He straightened up and pulled a few folded pages from an inside jacket pocket. “I talked to Gary this morning. Pretty sure I can get him down another 500, but here’s what he’s offering right now.” He slid the papers over, which held Jim’s scribbled hand writing over two printed pages of a Car-Fax report.

Spock studied the figures. They seemed reasonable, he thought: exactly in line with what he could pay without having to take out a new bank loan.

Scotty, apparently reading upside down, huffed a laugh. “Jesus Christ, Jim, what’d you have to do to get him down to that?”

Jim fluttered his eyelashes at Scotty. “Nothin’ I wouldn’t do to get a good deal out of you, sweetheart,” he said, flashing a thousand-watt grin, and Scotty rolled his eyes and snorted.

“Mm-hmm.”

Spock ruthlessly suppressed a flutter of jealousy in his stomach and kept his hands steady on the paperwork before him. Instead, he stared at the tiny black-and-white photo of the Jeep they had seen the day before. While he didn’t believe, really, Scott’s suggestion of how Jim had earned a good deal, he did believe that Jim had gone above and beyond to do this for him. He looked up, oddly moved and surprised, and he saw Jim frown briefly.

“I didn’t — I wasn’t trying to, like, overstep here, I just know car shopping isn’t your favorite, and that Po needs, you both need a way to get her to school.“

“Thank you,” Spock said, reaching over and gripping Jim’s arm just above the wrist. “This is — I am most grateful for your help. This sounds like the perfect solution.”

Jim sighed. “Oh, good. Good, that’s good then.”

“Yeah!” Scotty said, practically bouncing. “I gotta say, I’m excited to get started with this one. Not often I get to bring a loved one back to life! Um — do you, Jim, are you gonna to handle gettin’ it transferred over from Mitchell’s shop? It’s only that the last time we talked, we had a wee disagreement over —“

“I can handle that, if Spock’s OK with it,” Jim said. “You’ll have to deal with their finance person, but I can do the nuts and bolts with Gary. Or, if you want to, I don’t want to take this over.”

“I am happy to trust in your arrangements," Spock said, which was entirely true. Hearing that he would not have to worry further about the car question made him feel almost physically lighter. “How long do you think this adventure will take?”

Scotty rubbed a hand through his hair. “Hard to say for sure, but — once the other’s in hand, give me four days, I think. Can’t get started right away because I’ve got the McGregors’ van here tomorrow all day, and some recall work after that, but — should be four, five days tops.” He nodded toward the street. “Till then, if you want her, the loaner’s all yours.”

“Thank you,” Spock said, and took the key Scotty offered. “If it’s all the same, I’ll leave it parked here for now. I do not know if Po will have made arrangements for school tomorrow.”

“All the same to me,” Scotty said with a shrug. “Just let me know when to expect the new delivery, all right?”

Spock nodded and pocketed the key. They both said good-bye to Scotty and walked back out into the sunshine, and Jim paused on the sidewalk. “Is this really OK?”

“This meaning the car solution?” Jim nodded. “Of course,” Spock said. “It is a nearly ideal solution.”

“‘Nearly’?”

“I might have preferred for my car to never break down," Spock said, and Jim laughed. “Thank you, again, Jim. I appreciate your help.” He could feel an almost physical desire to offer Jim a token of thanks: a coffee, dinner, something, but under the weight of Po’s pre-date speculation, he couldn’t make himself suggest it. “Are you headed back to the diner?”

“Yup. Left Chekov with a tour group. He should be going insane by now.” He smiled. “Say, I’ll call Gary this afternoon before he leaves, get the car meeting set up. When’s good for you to go over? I can give you a lift if you don’t want to take the loaner. Plus, then you could drive the other one back over here.”

“Logical,” Spock said. “I am available this evening or tomorrow during the day, if either time would work to sign the papers and discuss finances.”

“I’ll let you know. Hey, say hi to Po for me, all right?”

“I will. Thank you for this.” 

Jim smiled. “Any time, man.”

On the walk back, Spock considered what had just happened as an answer to his question: this was more than friendship, certainly, he thought, and smiled briefly to himself at the confirmation.


	4. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner, awkwardness, and a distinct lack of cheese.

They were four minutes early for the first family dinner. Spock understood that this would be one minute late on his father’s clock, but he felt that being there at all had been a minor victory. He still did not have a running car. Having the loaner car had made travel to dinner that evening possible, but the loaner was an adventure in and of itself. Cleaning the cat hair off of the front seat had taken up time Spock had not budgeted. They emerged from the tiny, multi-colored hatchback onto the giant driveway just as the front door was beginning to open. Spock half wondered whether the maid had been sent to shoo off the riff-raff.

“An actual maid," Po whispered as they crossed the pavement to the doors.

“Please do not say I didn’t warn you," Spock said, and placed a hand on her shoulder as they walked up to the door.

They were shown not to the parlor but to the open seating in the formal living room, where two antique couches faced one another across an expensive coffee table laden with fresh flowers. The bar sparkled in the corner, and Spock suddenly realized he had never been invited to drink in this house. He hadn’t been back since he’d been old enough to do so legally.

The maid took their coats and said the Ambassador and Dr. Grayson would be down shortly. In fact, Spock knew, they would emerge in the next 90 seconds in order not to be seen as keeping them waiting for too long.

“Are those books real?” Po asked, staring at the far wall, what Sarek called the formal study and what Spock had always thought of as the show library. Three elegantly built-in bookcases held eight shelves each of antique, bound copies of some of the world’s great books. At least half were in other languages, representing his mother’s interests and tastes.

“Indeed,” he murmured. “Many early editions and rare finds.”

“Wow,” Po said, but had no chance for further comment: his parents arrived right then, his mother in advance of his father down the curving steps that edged the room. 

“Good evening, Mother, Father,” Spock said, turning toward them. Po had stepped in a bit closer than usual, and Spock appreciated it. “Po, I don’t believe you have yet met my mother.”

“Hi," Po said, raising one hand in a small, adorably awkward wave as Spock’s mother stepped into the room.

“Hello, Po,” she said, hands clasped before her chest tightly. “I’m your grandmother.”

“Is that — what would you prefer to be called?” Po asked. “I already asked Grandpa, and he said that’s fine, but —“

“Grandma is wonderful,” she said. “If you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not.” Po’s smile was shy but sincere, and Spock was grateful. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.

* * *

“Well, that was horrible.” Po fell into the chair across from Spock at Jim’s diner, where they had come directly after dinner with his parents. Jim appeared before Spock had even managed to free himself from his coat. 

“Uh-oh,” Jim said as Spock took his seat. “How horrible? Are we talking extra large coffee here, or — do I need to put chocolate chips in the pancakes?”

“Both,” Po said, pillowing her head on her arms. “I’m starving.”

Jim gave Spock a look, worried and curious, and Spock raised an eyebrow at his daughter. “It was not chocolate-chip level bad. I thought you and your grandmother seemed to get along quite well.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, head rising enough to unmuffle her voice, “that was all OK. But — Jim, they’re vegans.”

Jim’s laugh erupted like a bark. He stifled it against one hand, but not before Spock shot him a glare. “Oh. Really. Huh.”

“I admit, their vegetarianism has become a bit more… militant since my childhood,” Spock said. 

“To the exclusion of cheese,” Po said mournfully. “Cheese, Dad. Do you even know what the last meal was where I didn’t have cheese?”

“Breakfast?”

“Da-ad,” she whined. “Jim. Please. I’m so hungry.”

“Pancakes with extra cheese, coming right up,” he said, and disappeared to the kitchen.

Spock studied Po. “You were very quiet on the drive home.”

She shrugged. “Hard to talk over that beast Scotty loaned us,” she said, but smiled as she did. “Besides, you seemed kind of like you might need a minute.”

“Mm.” He had, actually, needed the silence. The evening had been a success, Spock knew: his mother’s smile at the end of the night had been warm and grateful, and his father had seemed genuinely delighted by Po’s academic achievement. Po, too, had seemed charmed by his parents and their home. 

Spock had been the only outlier. Too many awkward, silent, or tense past dinners had flooded his memory as he’d sat in the dining room, and he’d been torn between the impulse to quickly fill every silence — and to therefore spare Po the awkwardness he’d faced — or to keep his head down in order to minimize the chances of repeating past mistakes. His performance, he thought, had been transparently manic. 

“I like them,” Po said quietly. “But I don’t know them very well yet. And I love you, Dad. If this is going to be too hard —“

“No,” Spock said, reaching for her hand over the table top. “It is not. It is an adjustment, yes, but that is all. I only require a little more time to process these changes.”

She nodded, squeezing his hand. “We can always see if they’d let me come alone.”

“I would never let you go alone,” Spock said, and Po frowned. “Do not misunderstand. I do not believe that your grandparents would ever intentionally do you harm. They are not secretly dangerous. But I have had years of experience with them, and I would not deny you my expertise.”

Po’s lip twitched into a smirk. “Your expertise, eh? Your expertise in pissing Grandpa off about everything?”

“Exactly,” Spock said, accepting the cup of coffee Jim presented.

“And for you,” Jim said, and offered Po both a cup of coffee and tiny metal pot filled with cream. “You can just drink it straight from the pot if you want. I won’t tell Grandma and Grandpa Grayson.”

Po laughed and laced her coffee with cream. “So there’s a funny thought. Grandma and Grandpa at Jim’s Diner. Actually, have they ever been to Stars Hollow?”

“Certainly,” Spock said, as Jim became occupied in studying the front window and empty street beyond, “though I wouldn’t know which local highlights they found most interesting.”

He had shared some of his history with his parents with Po — some, but not all. For example, she did not know about Spock’s mother’s attempts to contact them after she was born. She knew that they had become estranged at the time of her birth, but Spock had always carefully told that story in a way that emphasized his parents’ concern about his schooling and prospects and minimized to the point of elimination any mention of not wanting Spock to be Po’s father. He had wondered at the wisdom of this, over the years, but now he felt justified. Surely, she would never have been able to have a satisfying relationship with her grandparents if it had started with the knowledge that they had never wanted her to begin with. 

He glanced up at Jim, who smiled back at them, nodding once. “Well, they’re welcome here if they do come, ever,” he said, “but I’m gonna have to limit my free coffee to the regulars.” He gripped their shoulders and gave a gentle shake, and Spock looked over just in time to recognize his own, smallest, most sincere smile echoed on Po’s face.


	5. The Town vs. T'Pring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock's never sure why, but everyone in town hates T'Pring.

Po’s first six weeks at school passed in something of rush. She took to the new school like a duck to water, mostly: there were a few bumpy moments in the second week when a classmate decided Po was a new intellectual rival, possibly a ringer, but that worked itself out over the next week. Po by now had a small group of friendly acquaintances at Chilton and had managed to maintain a strong relationship with her in-town best friend, too. Her grades seemed high, and she was constantly challenged, which made them both quite happy.

That happiness acted as a balm against the family dinners, which really hadn’t been so bad yet. They were awkward at times, certainly, but not hopelessly so. The adults were all at least united in their desire to make Po comfortable, so the thorniest issues of their past were left undiscussed. They stayed instead on relatively safe topics, like recent news, politics, and business, and then Spock took Po to Jim’s Diner at the conclusion of each meal for dairy-laden desserts.

And after the great car save, Spock had begun to study Jim’s behavior toward him in earnest. There were certainly hints of a deeper devotion than what simple friendship would explain. Spock, for example, seemed to be the only person in Stars Hollow (save Po) who never had to pay for coffee and who always had a standing invitation to monopolize Jim’s rare free time. He had yet to draw any firm conclusions from — or even picture any possible actions he might take with — this knowledge, but Spock found it warmed him just to know it.

Which was probably why he should have expected things to get complicated.

One Tuesday afternoon, Spock picked Po up from school in their new-old Jeep and delivered her directly to her best friend Abby’s house for the afternoon, where she could catch up with the news and gossip for the school she’d left behind. “We might go to the market for a while, but I’ll be home by 7,” she said.

“I believe Nyota will be cooking for us,” Spock said, and Po grinned.

“So 7:30,” she said, kissed his cheek, and then ran toward Abby’s front door. Spock steered himself the four blocks over to Nyota’s bungalow, where she was waiting in the yard. He had volunteered to help with her garden that afternoon in exchange for benefitting from the harvest, and it looked like she was ready to put him to work.

“So,” Nyota said an hour later, when they’d plucked every last winter turnip and Brussels sprout from the ground, “you going to come back for another round this weekend? I think we could finish off the kale if we really tried.” 

“Ah.” Spock carried the basket of dirty produce up to the porch and sat it on a side table. Nyota gestured toward the stairs, and he took a seat. “I must decline. T’Pring called just before we left for Po’s school this morning.”

“T’Pring. Huh.” Nyota handed him a glass, and when Spock looked up, he saw a familiar, sour expression on her face. “She’s coming for a visit?”

“She will be here Thursday.” Nyota sat next to him, staring out at the lawn. “I confess, it confuses me that no one in town likes T’Pring. She is, after all, Po’s mother. Surely, you must realize that some of her qualities come not only from my genes.” 

“No,” Nyota said, “pretty sure we all think that girl is fifty percent your good genes, 25 percent the nurture of our excellent town, and 25 percent pure luck.”

Spock sighed and sipped the lemonade Nyota had handed him. The weather today was unseasonably warm, though they were expecting snow again at the end of the weekend. “T’Pring is not that bad.”

“She is,” Nyota said cheerfully, “but it’s nice of you not to think so, for Po’s sake.”

Spock changed the subject, not willing to pick up an old argument about T’Pring’s merits (or lack thereof) as a mother. The truth was, really, that Spock was grateful that she hadn’t ever changed her mind. Though he had perhaps wished, once or twice, that she had been the one present to experience Po’s childhood rounds of projectile vomiting, he had never really wished that she would return to parent with him. Oh, he’d gone through a regrettable lonely spell when she had visited for a long stretch once and wished she would return to him — but that had been more about his own loneliness than any true desire for T’Pring’s company. He believed, actually, that her decision to leave them had been a sound one. 

And T’Pring had matured significantly since Po’s birth, as well. Though the very early years of Po’s life had been marked by her absence, she had first shown an interest in visiting Po around the time she turned 4. Spock had set very clear rules around their interactions: namely, that T’Pring had to either commit fully to being a part of Po’s life, with reliable visits and access, or she would need to decide that it would not be possible to have consistent contact. T’Pring had chosen contact, and she and Po had been in regular touch ever since. 

Her visits to Stars Hollow were generally brief but happened at least twice a year, and Po had flown to visit T’Pring for a week each summer since she’d turned eight. Spock didn’t mind the visits, and recently, he’d looked forward to them not only because Po did. He genuinely liked T’Pring. The upcoming visit would be no different. It bothered him that the same community which had accepted and nurtured him and his daughter would never accept his (or Po’s) judgment about her mother.

* * *

The next morning, Spock drove Po to school, then came back for coffee at Jim’s. Po had picked up a new extracurricular activity, working on the website for the school newspaper, and it now required that she arrive at an indecently early hour. “I feel like I should bring you two of these,” Jim said, sliding a cup across the counter to Spock.

“I will likely need one for the road,” Spock said, taking his first sip. “I may need to reconsider my policy on letting her drive herself.”

Jim grinned. “All it took was early mornings to get you to give up the keys, huh? Bet she would’ve signed up for early courses years ago.”

“Likely.” He took another sip and watched as Jim disappeared into the kitchen. He heard the flip and sizzle of something on the grill, and a few minutes later, Jim emerged with pancakes and bacon for some lucky patron behind Spock. Spock narrowed his eyes. “Are you here alone this morning?” he asked.

“Yeah, just for another hour. Rand’s daughter is sick, so she’s out today and tomorrow, probably, but Hadley’s filling in.” Jim gestured to the mostly empty dining room. “Not like I can’t take care of this myself. And, oh, hey, Rand said she’d take my shift Sunday. You want to go catch that new movie about NASA at the Gilmore theater? Supposed to be pretty good.”

Spock frowned. “I am uncertain as to my schedule this weekend,” he said, slowly. “T’Pring will be visiting.”

“Oh.” He said only the one syllable, but Spock heard behind it the same ugly judgment that Nyota had expressed. 

“Oh?”

Jim shrugged. “Just didn’t know she’d be here again. What’s that, twice in six months?”

“T’Pring is Po’s mother,” Spock said. “She is welcome to visit whenever she can.”

“Right,” Jim said, and then returned to the kitchen. There was no sizzle this time, just silence, and when he returned, he was not carrying food. 

“Right,” Spock echoed. “Is there some problem of which you wish to speak?”

Jim shrugged. “No.” Spock watched him. His jaw flexed, and then he said, quietly, “None of my business.”

He wouldn’t look at Spock, and that bothered him. He hadn’t meant to fight — in fact, he really hadn’t even meant to turn Jim down. He brooded over his coffee for a few moments while Jim started making a new pot of coffee. When he turned back around with a to-go cup already poured, Spock felt guilty for no discernible reason. “I am interested in that film,” Spock said. “Perhaps some other time?”

“Maybe,” Jim said with another shrug, and then he sighed. “Yeah. We’ll — I’m sure we can figure out another time.”

Spock left feeling vaguely dissatisfied with the entire conversation. He fluctuated between annoyance at Jim’s attitude about T’Pring and very real disappointment that he’d had to turn down the offered movie meet-up. He knew, however, that Nyota would not provide a sympathetic ear about this, and so he kept his concerns to himself as he went about his day.

* * *

On Thursday afternoons, Spock volunteered at the Vet Center. He did this because it was Jim’s big project, and because he thought the cause was just, but also because Leonard McCoy had bullied him into lending a helping hand. 

McCoy was a loud-mouthed doctor that Jim had met while in the service, and he’d followed Jim back to Stars Hollow at the end of his own military career. The George Kirk Veterans’ Center itself had started as an informal project, just a place for local vets to meet and talk and get some help navigating the system. Jim had used his father’s life insurance money to buy a small, fixer-upper former dentist’s office in town, which he had originally planned to subdivide. Instead, the Vets’ Center had expanded rapidly, filling a need in the county and surrounding towns. McCoy and Jim (with some paperwork help from Spock) had applied for grants from every possible agency, and drawing on those and now an official VA endorsement, they had managed to turn the place into a truly useful and compassionate center for veterans and their families. They could attend counseling or group sessions there, work with trained volunteer navigators to complete necessary paperwork or to understand their options with things like the GI Bill, or get career counseling and assistance in applying for jobs.

It was with this last that Spock could help. Though he did not hold a high school diploma of his own, he had stayed long enough to take the mandatory writing courses, to which he had added the required business writing classes at the local community college after earning his GED. This, and the fact that he reviewed resumes to find staff at the Inn, had made McCoy elect him the perfect person to do read-throughs and mock interviews with vets who came by for career assistance.

Jim had set up four computers in a space that had formerly held two dental chairs. Now, three people sat before the computers, each working on a new job application. Spock had checked with them all only a few minutes ago, and he was impressed by their progress. All three would be ready to send out cover letters and résumés shortly. 

His phone buzzed, and he excused himself to the hallway to answer it.

“I’m early," T’Pring said, “despite my good intentions to arrive, for once, on time.”

Spock nearly smiled. “Early is preferable.” 

“Is it? I seem to be sitting by myself on your porch.”

“Perhaps a bit later would have been better,” Spock admitted.

“I assume Po is still at school. Are you at the Inn?”

“I am not, currently,” Spock said. “But I will be there again in an hour, if you would like to meet me.”

She hummed, considering. “I do remember the pastries being quite good, but everyone on your staff dislikes me.”

“That is not entirely accurate,” Spock said. “I have hired two new people since your last visit.”

T’Pring laughed. “All right. I’ll meet you there in an hour. Don’t be late, though, or you’ll have to hunt for my body on those lovely manicured lawns.”

“Perish the thought,” Spock said, and hung up. 

In truth, he would be glad to see T’Pring. They hadn’t been terribly compatible as teenagers — she had been cold and superior while they had dated, and Spock had been too grateful for her attention to realize how poorly he was treated — but they had both aged into people who could appreciate each other. Spock now had the kind of self-confidence that only successful single parenting could allow, and T’Pring had been humbled through repeated exposure to aloof greatness in her chosen journalism career. They weren’t a love match, certainly, but Spock found comfort in her familiar company (and had once also found physical comfort there). He didn’t expect that would happen this time, however: T’Pring had been seeing the same man for almost two years now, a fellow reporter named Jeremy Stonn. That was well and good, he figured, as he thought he would feel vaguely guilty for sleeping with her while considering expanding his relationship with Jim. In fact, she would probably have interesting advice about Jim, which made him more eager to meet up with her.

He contemplated, briefly, trying to arrange to leave early, but an hour’s wait wasn’t unreasonable. Besides, he had made this commitment ages ago, and he would stick with it — and judging by the work he saw, a brief discussion on the importance of audience was certainly his civic duty.

Thirty minutes later, when McCoy ducked his head in to check on things, Spock briefly regretted his own regard for duty. “Good God, it’s like a funeral in here,” he said, leaning against the wall next to the door. “You’re even trying to type quietly, aren’t you, Baker? Spock, I said help them, not bore them to death. They’ve faced enough.”

“I assure you, this quiet is only a sign of deep concentration,” Spock said. “You would prefer we had some dance music, perhaps? Loud drums?”

“I’d prefer if it didn’t feel somber as shit in here,” McCoy said. “These three look like they wish you’d bring the dental chairs back.”

“I admit, I’m contemplating the usefulness of a needle full of anesthetics right now," Spock said, and McCoy rolled his eyes. “Did you need anything, Doctor?”

“No, no,” McCoy said, eyes sweeping around the room again. “Carry on, I guess. Just looking for Jim. I thought he was going to drop by this afternoon.”

“I know nothing of his current whereabouts,” Spock said neutrally. He accepted a paper resume from Corporal Baker, noticing she had already corrected the first five things he had found wrong with the last draft.

“Uh-oh,” McCoy said, “my office. Let’s go.” Spock raised an eyebrow, but McCoy raised both of his right back and jabbed his thumb toward the hallway. “Be there in five or I’ll send in the honest-to-God cavalry.”

It seemed prudent to follow his orders, though he had no idea for what reason McCoy believed they needed an interview. Spock quickly collected drafts from the three present students and promised to leave edited versions of their cover letters with the front desk receptionist the next morning. He didn’t think any of them needed significant revisions and was admiring their improvement as he walked to McCoy’s office.

McCoy’s small office space had been converted from the dentist’s personal office, and it had a medical professional feel, if that was possible. Some of it, of course, came from the large framed medical school diploma on the wall, but some of it was just the shape of things: the two chairs facing a broad desk stacked with files, for instance, and the stack of thick Physician’s Desk References on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. McCoy did not often sit behind the desk, though; in Spock’s experience, he preferred to perch on the corner of it, a posture he struck as Spock walked in.

“Well. What’d he do now?”

Spock looked down at the resume in his hand. “Lieutenant Keller?”

“What? No. Jim. You said you don’t care where he is, and I wanna know why!”

“I said no such thing.”

McCoy scoffed. “You didn’t have to. Your tone said it all.”

His gigantic leaps of intuition were McCoy’s least helpful quality, Spock thought, though he understood that his abrasive manner and hunches had made him spectacularly effective in group therapy. “Then my tone was incorrect,” Spock said. “I do not know where Jim is. That is all I meant to say or imply.” McCoy kept staring at him, expectantly, and Spock shrugged. “There is nothing wrong,” he said, finally. 

McCoy shook his head as though disappointed in Spock as a person. “Uh-huh. And that’s why he’s been walkin’ around like someone took a bulldozer to his diner. Here I thought y’all were gettin’ along real good these last few weeks. Car shopping, dinner, movie dates…”

Spock could usually tolerate McCoy’s theoretically well-intentioned teasing for longer than this. Today, however, it felt accusatory and grating. “We are ‘getting along’ just fine. If you do not have a further point to make, perhaps I, too, could get along to my next appointment?”

“Ha! What’s so important, huh? Big party at the Inn? Like Sulu doesn’t have that place wired.”

“I am meeting T’Pring,” Spock said, and McCoy’s face fell almost instantly.

“Well, hell,” he said, and crossed his arms. 

Spock would have rolled his eyes, but McCoy was staring at the floor. “I believe I shall fail to mention your greetings,” he said, and walked out of the office before McCoy could reply. Outside, blue skies met him, and he paused to take a breath and relieve some of the tension of his every meeting with McCoy. Before he could get his mind calmed, though, he heard a young voice yell, “Hey, Captain Kirk!” from the other side of the lawn.

Two men in wheelchairs were on the basketball court, tossing a ball between them while Nurse Chapel looked on. And there, strolling into the sunlight between them, was Jim. He dropped a hand onto the shoulder of the nearest man and said something that made both men laugh. Spock had seen Jim do this a few dozen times at the Vet Center: he could slip into this casual command persona with ease, his spine straightening even as his smile grew wider, his jokes more vulgar. He looked every inch the still-serving captain, really, except for the slightly-too-long spike of his hair and the worn civilian clothing. The men asked him a question, and he paused before answering, saying something that made them both nod while Nurse Chapel looked suddenly to the side, as though afraid to show some emotion. Jim patted the men on the backs and grinned, clearly saying good-bye, and they called after him to set up a two-on-two game. “Ain’t gonna win this time either, Captain, ‘less you got a ringer," one called.

“I’ve been practicing, Marshall,” he called back, grinning. “We’ll just see, all right?

Jim, in the sunlight, grinning, was so beautiful.

Spock sighed. He would have to deal with this soon, he knew; pining wasn’t attractive or productive. For now, though, he had T’Pring to worry about, and dinner tomorrow with his parents, and a weekend of navigating Po’s schedule while her mother was in town. There would be time to deal with Jim, and Spock’s feelings for him, next week.


	6. Family Dinners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner with the parents, and then dinner as parents.

T’Pring found the arrangement with Spock’s parents hilarious. “I’ll go with you,” she said, when Spock explained where he and Po were headed on Friday evening.

“Uh, Mom, really?” Po said, saving Spock from saying essentially the same thing as soon as his mouth worked again.

“Of course,” she said, touching up her hair in their entry-way mirror. “Your parents and I have always gotten along.”

Spock coughed just to make sure he could still control his own breathing. “Have you talked with them since…” He gestured to their daughter.

“Certainly,” she said. “They still attend the Christmas party at my father’s estate, and your mother and father were in London several times last year for meetings and such. I believe I owe them a specialty bag of tea, actually. Hmm.”

A physical shudder of surprise ran down Spock’s spine. Po grabbed his elbow. “Mental breakdown in the car, OK? We’re gonna be late if we don’t go now.”

“I’ll drive," T’Pring said, and that was enough to snap Spock out of it.

“Absolutely not,” he said, then cleared his throat. “I am not dreading this dinner so much that I would rather die in a head-on collision.”

T’Pring stared at him for a moment, then smiled, just the corner of her mouth lifting. “But you had to think about it for a second, didn’t you?”

“I never have to think about whether I want to drive anywhere with you,” Spock said. “I have a default response.”

They were not late, luckily, and Spock knew they needed all of that luck on their side. Bringing T’Pring — uninvited and unexpected — to family dinner was certainly not enough of an offense to end the arrangement, was it? He fought worry as they walked to the porch, where T’Pring took his arm as the maid opened the door.

“It’s been too long!” Spock’s mother said, embracing T’Pring at the foot of the stairs in the living room, only moments later. Spock thought he might need to sit down. “How’s young Mr. Stonn? How’s the new flat?”

“Not new anymore," T’Pring said, “and better for it. You’ll have to visit again and see what we’ve managed with the balcony now.”

“I would like that,” Amanda said.

Spock distracted himself from the world-ending paradox of T’Pring and his mother getting along by noting that she had avoided the question about Stonn. Surely, they hadn’t broken up, had they? He thought she would have let him know — or at least told Po, who had met Stonn and mostly approved.

They made it through cocktails and small talk with Amanda, T’Pring, and Po taking up most of the conversation, discussing school and work. Amanda and T’Pring sang the praises of a particular exhibit at the British Museum, and Po’s eyes lit up at the possibility of sometime visiting with one or both of them. “Perhaps," Spock said, when she turned interested eyes to him. She did, after all, have time in the summer to spend with her mother.

Dinner itself was some kind of roasted root vegetable stew with an airy sourdough bread. The bread was excellent, at least, though Spock thought it needed butter.

“And cheese," Po said later, when they had finally escaped to the car. T’Pring had nearly acquiesced to Amanda’s suggestion of a coffee refill after their small chocolate dessert, an infraction for which she would not have been forgiven. “The bread and the stew could’ve used cheese. Like Velveeta, maybe?”

“Such refinement already," T’Pring said, grinning back at Po from the front seat. “I can see why you like this new school.” Po stuck her tongue out, and T’Pring laughed. “They’ve been insufferable vegans for at least three years now,” she said, “ever since your father’s heart scare.”

“Heart scare?” Spock asked. He kept his hands steady on the wheel.

T’Pring’s voice grew softer. “I’m sorry. I may be speaking out of turn.”

“When has that ever stopped you?” Spock said.

“Fair," she granted. “He had chest pains during a meeting in Geneva. They thought maybe it was altitude or jet lag or something, but it turned out to be a minor blockage. As far as I’ve heard, his every cardiology visit since then has been completely fine.”

The road before them stretched as dark and flat as ever, but Spock concentrated fully, eyes unblinking. “Fine," he murmured. His father had never been in ill health during his childhood. He had, in fact, always maintained a pretty strictly vegetarian diet and some form of exercise. That he’d had any illness during Spock’s absence had rarely been a consideration; he had worried more for his mother, whose appearance at times bordered on frail.

“He said he’s the healthiest he’s been in years at golf,” Po said, “and I believe it. His swing is pretty amazing.”

T’Pring hummed. “Graceful but deadly, if I remember correctly.”

Spock wanted to slam his head against the steering wheel. “Of course, you are golf friends with my father.”

“I enjoy a challenge,” T’Pring said.

Po cleared her throat. “This is a discussion better had over second dinner. Can we please go to Jim’s?”

“Second dinner?” T’Pring asked. “Interesting. I find I’m also in favor of this.”

Something in Spock’s stomach twisted, but he wasn’t sure why. Jim would be nothing if not perfectly polite, no matter his feelings for T’Pring. “All right,” he agreed, “second dinner at the diner it is.”

But Jim wasn’t there that night. Instead, they were greeted by Jan Rand, Jim’s assistant manager and friend. Spock found Rand a strange but altogether pleasant fit in the diner. Unlike Jim, who preferred flannel and jeans, when Rand was managing the diner, she dressed up a bit — often a dress and cheerful leggings or a fancy top with costume jewelry. She was the one who had convinced Jim to finally get a web site set up, who had convinced him to add seasonal and local fare to the menu, who had also convinced him to finally hire Hadley as their extra cook and more wait staff than just Chekov to help with the lunch and weekend rush. As far as Spock could tell, what Rand earned in return (besides her pay and benefits package) was a lifetime supply of cheat codes on the Star Ship Enterprise video game she and Jim played together.

“Hey, welcome, one and all,” Rand said, grinning even at T’Pring as she crossed to their table. “I know what you two are having, because I made my special peanut butter pancake batter today, but — do you need a menu, T’Pring?”

Spock was impressed that she pronounced her name correctly and without the usual lilt of disapproval. T’Pring said, “Whatever they are having will also suit me, I’m sure. Unless it contains avocados.”

“Definitely not,” Rand said. “Three coffees?”

“Yes, god, thank you,” Po said.

“I would like a hot cocoa, please,” Spock said, surprising even himself.

T’Pring looked at him for a moment, then said, “I believe I would like the same.”

Rand raised both eyebrows, but then shrugged. “Two cocoas and… are you allowed to drink coffee alone, young lady?”

“Fine," Po sighed, “one for me, too. With whipped cream?”

“I try never to serve it without," Rand said gravely. “Give me a couple minutes on the food while I check on everyone else, OK?” She gestured at the only other party in the restaurant, a family of five eating through a few baskets of burgers, then wandered their way.

“This reminds me of a place near our flat,” T’Pring said, and regaled Po with a story about a small curry restaurant that had little to do with the diner. Spock let his mind wander. T’Pring’s stories of the city always enchanted Po, but they sometimes reminded Spock of how small, really, his life had become.

Po glanced around. “Where’s Jim, anyway? He’s usually here on Friday.”

“I do not know,” Spock said. “He mentioned he would be off tomorrow night. It seems unusual that he would take two nights off in a row.”

“Really?” T’Pring said. “Does he live in the diner?”

“Actually, yes,” Spock said, and pointed toward the upstairs apartment.

Po rolled her eyes. “Jim’s just a workaholic. He probably would live down here if he could.”

“Don’t give him any ideas,” Rand said, appearing behind Po to drop her cup before her. Her eyes widened comically at the giant tower of whipped cream on her drink. “It’d be pretty hard to serve with Jim sleeping on the floor by the counter.”

T’Pring grinned as her own cup appeared. “Perhaps if he slept in the window,” she said, raising one eyebrow at Spock. “It might draw a crowd.”

Rand snorted. “Yeah, just what we need, more of Jim’s groupies cluttering up the place.”

“Jim has groupies? Do tell,” Po said, and Rand wagged a finger.

“Not my story, really,” she said.

Spock, desperate to change the subject, said, “Jim mentioned Arianna was sick. Is she feeling better?”

“Yeah, she’s good,” Rand said, a half-smile forming, “but I think now Rick’s coming down with it, and that’s about ten times worse.”

“That is usually the way," Spock agreed.

Both Po and T’Pring were glancing at their phones, now, and Spock let himself admit to some curiosity about Jim’s whereabouts. Had he and McCoy left for the city just after Spock had seen him that afternoon? Perhaps McCoy had decided the best cure for whatever ailed Jim was a trip to some seedy city bar, or a night with a patron of that same establishment. The thought made Spock’s stomach roll, and he took a slow sip of his own cocoa. The taste was usually calming, one of the unblemished memories of his own childhood, tied to his maternal grandmother. Tonight, though, it seemed too sweet, and he longed for a cup of coffee brewed by Jim himself, an easy smile over the counter, a chance to do over their conversation of earlier in the week.

Instead, he had peanut-butter pancakes and hot cocoa with his daughter and her mother, which was not the worst end to the day. Spock tried to shake off his mood and turn his attention to Po, who was asking T’Pring about her work in London with avid interest. Her own recent dive into school journalism had made her more curious than before about T’Pring’s work, and Spock thought this was a good avenue of connection for them.

“Actually, I don’t believe I’ll be in London much longer," T’Pring said.

Po’s face scrunched up in confusion. “Why not?”

“It’s not definite, yet, but — I would say there’s an 80 percent chance of a transfer happening in the next six months.”

“Why?” Spock asked, eyes narrowing.

“I thought you liked London,” Po said.

“I do,” T’Pring said, “but there’s an opening coming up on the politics desk — in New York.” Po audibly gasped, and Spock barely restrained his own surprise. New York was close, closer than T’Pring had ever lived. New York was the difference between twice-yearly visits and seeing T’Pring for brunch a few times a month. “It might be a temporary assignment, but it would give me a chance to brush up on domestic economic policy and perhaps be on camera a bit.”

“Mom — TV? That’s incredible! That’s what you’ve been hoping for, right?”

T’Pring’s smile, now, was the perfect match of her most vulnerable smile at 14, at 16, which told Spock everything he needed to know about that answer. She wanted this desperately and was almost afraid to hope that it would work out. Spock almost had to look away. She had been lovely when they were children together, and she was beautiful now. He covered her hand on the table with his own and squeezed it, and she turned hers over to squeeze his back. Po took her other hand, grinning. “It’s not a sure thing,” T’Pring said, again, but Spock thought perhaps it was, if she had told them.

“It would be pleasing to have you nearby,” Spock said, and he meant it.

“Will Stonn move here?” Po asked.

T’Pring sighed, and though Spock released his grip a bit, she didn’t let go of him. “That is complicated,” she said. “At least while I’m settling in, there might be a fair amount of travel involved. He’s not keen on moving here just to see me less than he would have in London. And there are, of course, visa issues to consider.”

“So you’ll — what, make it work across the ocean?” Po asked.

T’Pring shrugged delicately. “If that is what’s called for, yes,” she said, and Spock caught something in her tone that made him wonder how many fights lay beneath that calm.

She released his hand as the pancakes arrived, and they transitioned easily to more talk of Po’s new school, and from there, to how T’Pring and Po would spend their next day together. Spock had to check in at work anyway in the afternoon, so they would be able to have some mother-daughter time at the house or around town. It was a pleasant second dinner and, afterwards, a nearly quiet drive home. At the house, Po peeled off with a kiss goodnight to both parents, and Spock started to pull linens out to set up the couch bed for T’Pring.

He wondered, briefly, how it would have been, had she stayed. Would this have been their every night? The comfortable dinner, the gentle laughter, and then bed — where they were certainly compatible? It was hard, in some ways, not to want that, and yet Spock knew that he and T’Pring were an imperfect match. She had more ambition than he did, more drive to be out in the world, to make a name for herself. Spock’s great drive mostly came from a desire to keep Po safe and happy — and, at times, to prove wrong the assumptions his father had made about him.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” T’Pring said, smiling through a deadpan tone, as she came down the stairs wearing Spock’s robe. It had been a gift a few years ago from Po for Father’s Day. He rarely wore it during warm months, as it was made of thick, fluffed fleece and luxuriously soft.

“My house is your house,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “and I’m glad you have found things that are useful.”

“I remembered this from last time with some anticipation,” she admitted. “I am hoping if I wear it enough, Po will take the hint for Mother’s Day.”

“I shall see she gets the appropriate reminder,” Spock said. T’Pring walked closer, telegraphing her movement before placing one slim hand on his waist. He expected the gentle kiss to his mouth and allowed it, briefly, to deepen, closing his eyes and laying a hand on her face.

“It is always good to see you,” she said, smiling as she drew back, though he could read sadness in her eyes.

“Things are so bad with Stonn, then?” Spock asked. He set the folded sheets on the chair and sat next to her on the couch.

She shrugged and slid her hands into the pockets of his robe. “I told you it was a visa problem, and that is partly true. But there is a solution to this, of course,” she said. “We could marry.”

“Ah.”

Outside, a truck lumbered down the street, and Spock took the moment to study T’Pring’s face. Her gaze was focused on the fireplace, but she seemed far away and as lost as he could remember. “We have talked around it because — I do not know what my answer would be. Or should be.”

“I had thought you were quite serious about him.”

She laughed, softly. “What does serious mean, though? I do — love him,” she said after a pause. “I do care for him.”

“Have you pictured a future together?”

Now, he thought he saw her blush. “Sometimes,” she said, “but it — it always seems so uncertain. I can’t picture clearly what it would be like, forever, with him.”

Spock gently took her hand. “I don’t think it’s whether you can picture a certain future with him that’s important, right now,” he said. “I think it’s whether you can picture a future without him.”

T’Pring nodded. She squeezed Spock’s hand gently. “So, about whom do you have future thoughts, then?”

“Mostly, Po,” Spock admitted, and T’Pring’s squeeze turned hard, prompting. “I have… been considering someone.”

“Someone," she said, laughing. “Well. Perhaps tomorrow night, I’ll get a name?”

“Perhaps,” Spock said, thinking it might be nice to discuss this with T’Pring.

“Turn about’s fair play,” she said. “You look exhausted tonight, though. Leave these sheets, and I will see to my own arrangements.”

Spock did feel worn out. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Good night.”

“Good night.”


	7. High Tea and Apology Dates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tale of two more diner meals.

Spock woke up late the next morning. He knew this because it felt late, and also because his alarm clock was missing from its usual place next to the bed. 

“My phone battery was dead when I went to bed,” T’Pring said, after admitting she had borrowed his bedside alarm. “I thought you would use your own phone, if you needed a wake-up.”

Po, sipping a cup of coffee as she leaned against the counter, said, “Dad doesn’t believe in cell phones before lunch.” She glanced at an imaginary watch. “Though, hey, it’s almost 10:30, so we’re at least in brunch territory.”

“Is this a religious belief or… something more sensible?” T’Pring asked, one amused eyebrow raised.

“Please hand me a coffee,” Spock said, sinking into a seat at the table. He glanced between Po and T’Pring while Po kindly poured him a cup. Both were already dressed for the day, he noted. Po had a black skirt and tights with paper airplanes on them matched to two layers of green-and-blue blouses, while her mother had opted for a long red sweater over form-fitting black pants. They wore nearly matching black boots, and Spock was struck briefly by how alike they really looked. He cleared his throat and accepted his coffee. “Do you two have plans?”

They explained in turns that they had decided to go into the city for the day, where T’Pring needed some kind of new travel case and it was implied that Po might, also, need something new and interesting. Spock nodded at it all, aware that Po would be reasonable in her choices. Her tastes ran more toward impressive and current books than high fashion, after all, and if T’Pring felt like taking her shopping, all the better. Though her journalist’s salary was not substantial, her inheritance was, and she did manage to treat Po to something on nearly every trip.

“I shall head to the Inn, then," Spock said. “Let me know if I should expect you for dinner.”

“Don’t wait up,” Po said, kissing his cheek, and T’Pring laughed and kissed the other one before they headed out. Spock spared a moment’s panic at the idea of sending Po in a car with T’Pring to the city, but he made himself calm down. She had certainly become a better driver since high school.

He sipped his coffee for a few more moments, then forced himself through the shower and into dress clothes. Fifteen minutes later, he was walking into Jim’s diner for his second round of coffee and, perhaps, leftover peanut butter pancakes, if Rand had kept the extra batter.

Rand wasn’t there, though: Jim was, lining up mugs on a shelf, and when he looked up and spotted Spock, he seemed to flinch. “Oh, hey,” he said, voice low. That morning, he wore a navy-blue button down over a black T-shirt and jeans. He looked somehow more ragged than usual, though his hair was neatly combed: perhaps it was his eyes, Spock thought, as he walked up to the counter. The shirt set off the blue of his eyes but also reflected the purplish smudges beneath them. Spock stood next to his usual stool, and Jim edged further back, now about ten feet away on the other side. “You, uh, I didn’t think I’d see you in today.”

“I am working at the Inn this morning,” Spock said.

Jim nodded, eyes focused on the cake bell on the counter. “So, you ordering to go, then?”

He had been planning to sit, but something in Jim’s manner was so off as to make Spock instantly uncomfortable. “I suppose I should.” 

The grill sizzled in the kitchen, and Jim turned to the coffee maker. He spoke over his shoulder to Spock, not turning around. “Food or just coffee?”

Spock was about to reply that he would take a muffin, or something easy to carry, when the doorbell jingled behind them and he heard familiar laughter. Scotty and Nyota had just walked in, and Scotty made a show of pulling out a chair for Nyota. “Oi, it’s Spock! Excellent, have you ordered yet? Grab a chair, will ya?”

Jim had turned and was now staring down at his menu pad. “I guess it’s for here, after all?” There was no mistaking the disappointment in his voice. 

“It would appear," Spock said, and walked over to take the suggested seat across from Nyota. “Good morning.”

“Aye, it is, indeed,” Scotty said. “Wonderful weather we’ve got. I’m trying to talk Nyota into a quick jaunt over to Merriton for a look around —“

“And to pick up some parts you need,” she said, though her expression was fond exasperation. “Whereas I think it’s a beautiful day for a hike and picnic —“

“Because you heard there are some of those rare-as-diamonds mushrooms up the hill and you want me to get all dirty,” Scotty said, and they grinned at one another for a moment. Even Jim’s appearance with coffee didn’t interrupt them, partly because Jim barely said a word as he handed over their cups.

“Ah, mornin’, Jim. Isn’t it a fine day?” Scotty said.

“Sure.” Jim’s eyes remained locked to his menu pad. “You all want your usuals?”

“I —“

“Great. Coming right up,” Jim said, and turned back toward the kitchen.

They chatted idly for a few moments, Nyota complaining about Scotty’s latest foray into “fixing” her kitchen appliances while Scotty looked both abashed and proud at the same time. They also recounted, in far too much detail, a soccer match they had watched the day before, and Spock let his mind wander to what he would need to accomplish at the Inn.

Nyota’s story and Spock’s daydream were both interrupted by the sound of Jim snapping at the coffee maker across the room, and then at the kitchen aide who had come to help.

“Wow, what’s his problem?” Nyota asked, staring as Jim disappeared into the kitchen. Spock looked out the window, though he privately had the same question.

“Ach, if the texts I got from the good doctor last night are any indication, I’d say hangover,” Scotty said.

Spock sipped his coffee, half expecting it to be worse than usual. It wasn’t; it was great, full-bodied with just the right brightness, strong and hot. “That would explain why Rand was working when we came in last night.”

“‘We’?” Nyota asked.

“T’Pring accompanied Po and I to dinner with my parents. We came here afterwards.”

“Is she stayin’ a while, now?” Scotty asked. 

Spock raised an eyebrow. “T’Pring’s work is in London.”

“Huh. I thought I heard — well, never mind.”

Nyota rolled her eyes. “You’ve been gossiping with the ladies at the grocery store again, huh?”

“I can’t help it! It’s next door, isn’t it, and they’re friendly.”

“What gossip could possibly exist about T’Pring?” Spock asked. “She has been in Stars Hollow for less than 48 hours.”

“You’d be surprised what you can stir up in under a day,” Scotty said. “For instance, I heard Mrs. Murtry mention this morning that you had a rather cozy family dinner here last night. She told Lila — that’s the new cashier’s name, the one with the purple hair streak — that she wouldn’t be surprised if you all were giving it a go again.”

Nyota groaned. “Because they had dinner together? This town needs to get a life.”

Scotty shrugged. “They said there was hand-holding.”

Nyota looked at Spock, who shrugged. “That is true,” he said, “though I would not ascribe any deeper meaning to it than friendship.”

“You never hold my hand,” she said, and Jim reappeared with their food before Spock could reply.

The plates dropped to the table with unnecessarily heavy thuds. “Everything good? OK,” Jim said, and then he walked away, though Scotty called a request for strawberry syrup after him.

“I guess he’s heard that rumor, then,” Nyota said. “God, you were cuddling up to T’Pring in Jim’s diner?”

Spock spared a few seconds to mourn that he hadn’t left this manner of gossip behind when he’d left school. “Nothing romantic in nature is going on between T’Pring and I,” Spock said, and he heard Jim snort softly from just behind him.

“Here’s your syrup, and also, bullshit, Spock,” Jim said. He glanced around the table. “I’ll get you more coffee.”

The slam of the coffeepot was audible from even their distance. Spock suppressed a sigh. “Perhaps I should request mine to go.” 

“Not until I hear a little more of this story, please,” Nyota said. “You just came here for dinner? I thought you had dinner with your parents last night.”

A headache had begun to curl behind Spock’s temples, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose. Outside, a truck lumbered past, overloaded with out-of-season firewood. Perhaps the Inn could use more wood, he thought, wondering how suspicious it would be to jump up and run after the truck. “We did,” he said. “T’Pring is apparently still friendly with my parents, and so she was delighted to join us. The food, however, left something to be desired —“

“Dairy products,” Nyota said, nodding and apparently remembering his own recollection of Po’s cheese pleading from the previous dinners.

“— and so it was suggested that we come here for a second meal.”

“And family bonding?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Spock said with a shrug, but Nyota’s eyes narrowed. “There were some… emotional topics to discuss.” As they both stared at him, Spock took a slow drink of his coffee. The truck was already gone outside. Too bad. “T’Pring is likely moving to New York in the next six months.” 

“What?”

“You don’t say,” Scotty said. “For business or pleasure?” He wagged his eyebrows in a way even Spock could discern as suggestive.

“Business,” he said, as Jim returned with coffee. “She is likely to receive a promotion that would bring her to the city.”

He heard Jim take a deep breath, but he said nothing, just filled Scotty’s cup. Spock tried to concentrate on his pancakes, hoping that they could table the topic, at least until Jim was out of earshot. 

Nyota had other plans, apparently. She lay a hand on Spock’s wrist. “But there’s nothing going on between you?”

“T’Pring is involved with a man in London, about whom she is very serious,” Spock said for what had to be at least the tenth time that year. “We are good friends and nothing more, as I have said.”

“Then what in the world is she doing answering your door in your bathrobe, exactly?” Jim hissed. “I mean, call me crazy, Spock, but that’s not exactly ‘good friends and nothing more’ material.”

“I’ll just take that, shall I?” Scotty said, rescuing the coffee pot from Jim’s wildly gesturing hand and taking it back to the counter.

Spock glanced at Nyota for support, but found her eyebrows raised, too. “She wore what where now?”

Jim crossed his arms. A flush of red streaked his face, though Spock couldn’t tell whether it was embarrassment, anger, or too much time in the kitchen. He was still too confused to speak and was glad when Jim did. “I stopped by this morning, early, and T’Pring answered wearing Spock’s robe. The one from Father’s Day, you know? Yeah.” He re-crossed his arms. “She said you were still in bed, and it looked like she’d just crawled out of it, herself.” The accusation in Jim’s voice was clear and angry. His cutting stare was certainly not the eye contact Spock had craved. 

Spock sighed deeply, exhausted and beyond frustrated now. Around them, the diner had hushed just enough that Spock knew there were local patrons there, eating up this tiny personal show. Normally, he would have denied Jim’s assumptions, or refused to talk about it, but he was so, so tired of this. So he met Jim’s stare with one of his own and said, “She borrowed my robe because she was staying at my home, where she slept on the couch, in my living room, where the curtains provide some but not total privacy. And she is welcome in my home at any time because she is the mother of my child and, at this point, one of my oldest friends.”

Scotty returned but hovered nearby, looking nervous. Spock stared calmly straight ahead, eyes now focused past Jim and into the street beyond. “And what business of yours is it, exactly, what happens between us?” Spock asked, proud of how even his voice remained. Jim’s face remained flushed; he saw Nyota’s hand had risen to her mouth. “I have been judged for the length of Po’s entire life over my relationship to her mother, and I find myself surprised and disappointed that you have all so resolutely joined that crowd. This frankly provincial attitude toward a woman who made a perfectly logical choice in a bad situation, and who has more than made amends for any resentment I may have had, must end. From all of you.” He stood and straightened his shirt. The diner was too quiet around them. “Have a pleasant morning.”

He had made it five blocks, nearly to the Inn, before he heard running footsteps behind him. He expected Nyota, but it was, instead, Jim’s hand that landed on his arm, stopping him just at the edge of Mae Greenberg’s lawn. “Spock,” Jim said, panting, “stop.” 

Spock did, though he did not turn, waiting instead for Jim to walk around him. Jim leaned one hand on the decorative iron fence, over-dramatically, Spock thought: five blocks would hardly be a warm up. “Did I forget to pay?” Spock asked, hearing the chill of his own voice and knowing his father would be proud.

“Jesus, OK. No. Wait.” Jim took a deep breath. Mae’s tree rained a few bright-green seeds down to the ground between them, and Spock watched them glide through the warming air. Jim’s face was still red. “I’m sorry. You’re — you’re absolutely right. I’ve been a dick about T’Pring.” He met Spock’s eyes, just briefly. “She’s — I just remember, you know, that time when — “

“That was almost ten years ago,” Spock said, quiet but frustrated. 

“— when you walked around for a few months like someone had stepped on your puppy, and I don’t want you to have to do that again. Ever,” he said, eye contact suddenly more solid. “And — and when I showed up, I was going to say that, anyway, like, I had come over just to talk to you because I know you’re an adult, you’re like the most fucking capable adult I’ve ever met, and you get to make your own choices and all of that, and I didn’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t choose her or —“

“Jim,” Spock interrupted, and Jim took a breath and nodded. The conversation could go too many ways from here, and Spock had always been a scientist at heart, always ready to indulge his own curiosity through questioning. “Why exactly did you come over?”

“Oh. Uh, this morning, I, ah, huh.” Jim scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand up in reckless spikes. “I woke up hung over as hell, and I just wanted to say — it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really, I’m very sorry. I had no right.”

Spock wanted to sigh, or yell, or hit something — maybe Jim? — or just bury his face in his hands. Instead, he inclined his head in the way his father had done in countless meetings and, later, at their family dinner table, when he was trying to suppress probably these same reactions. “Thank you for saying that.”

Jim nodded. “I get that you don’t believe me yet. But I think even Uhura’s a little freaked out after that outburst —“ Spock raised an eyebrow “— OK, that well-deserved lecture, and we’re all going to get our shit together and be nicer to T’Pring. And to you. You’ll see.”

“I will hope so," Spock said. He could hear the rigidity of his words, but he didn’t know how to release himself, now, back to the informality that he and Jim had so often enjoyed. The silence between them stretched out a few seconds past comfortable, and Spock looked past Jim to the end of the street. Saved by work, he thought. “I should begin my work day.”

“Yeah, I should get back, too.” Jim ruffled his own hair again, leaving more spikes in his wake. “All right. But — hey, come in later, OK? Or tomorrow morning. Bring, ah, the whole family, all right? I’m serious, I’ll be good.”

“Thank you,” Spock said. “I will see how the time goes.” He meant this, actually: he had no idea whether T’Pring and Po would return in time for dinner, and he didn’t know if they would have made plans for the next morning yet, either. T’Pring would fly out the next afternoon. 

Jim nodded. “OK. See you later, then, I guess.” He lifted one hand, hesitated a few seconds, and then clapped Spock briefly on the shoulder before walking past him. Spock paused, glancing up at the twirling green seeds still suspended on high branches above him. His stomach churned, now, with the delayed anxiety of what he’d just done: _yelled_ at his _friends_ , the people who sustained him, who understood him, who had been his lifeline through these very challenging years. Yet — there had been something in Jim’s face, his vulnerability as he’d apologized, that made Spock feel as though they might come out of this in a new place. 

The puzzle of what this might mean faded to a low hum of friendly anxiety as soon as he entered the Inn. Sulu had left him an organized list of small guest issues and ideas that Spock was happy to follow up on. He let the work consume him so entirely that, a few hours later, Nyota was able to sneak up on him.

“Ah,” he said, as she set down a tray with four small, white-iced cakes and a cup of steaming black tea, “I see my afternoon high tea and apology date has begun.”

She sat in the chair next to his desk. “I’m sorry,” she said. Her eye contact was direct and immediate. “I am. Really. I — I absolutely don’t like her, you’re right, but it’s not entirely because I’m a judgmental bitch when it comes to my friends’s former lovers.”

“What percentage —“

“Spock, “she said, and he picked up a cake, taking a bite to signal no further interruptions. “I do think she would be a bad fit for you. And I also think you’re sometimes a little too eager to be kind and forgiving with her. I mean, I know, she’s Po’s mother, so that means you have to be nice in front of the kid, but — you’re allowed to be angry with her, or disappointed, or, I don’t know, anything.”

The cakes had a mild but distinct flavor of sweetly tender almond and vanilla, Spock’s favorites, and he took a moment to wash his bite down with a sip of tea before responding. “Her decision was absolutely logical, considering —“

“No,” Nyota said. “I’m not talking about logic. I’m talking about — you weren’t logical about it. You were a kid, and you were fierce and fearless, and you kept Po, and you are allowed to be proud of that. You are also allowed to be angry about how it happened and why, and about the ways it made your life harder. And to me, your best friend, you’re allowed to communicate that any time you’d like.” Spock tilted his head in acknowledgement. Nyota nodded, then picked up a cake for herself. “I mean, I also hate her because I feel just the teeny, tiniest bit threatened when you go off about how she’s one of your oldest, closest friends, too.”

Spock hid a smile behind his second cake. “No one could take your place,” he said, quietly but surely, and he watched Nyota’s eyes flutter in pleased embarrassment. “Not as my friend, and certainly not as my favorite purveyor of baked goods.”

“Job security is all I ask,” she said.

* * *

Po and T’Pring arrived that evening while Spock was showering. He had left Nyota in his home’s kitchen only twenty minutes before, certain she would find nothing worth cooking. By the time he made it back downstairs, he heard sounds of amiable laughter about the different challenges of trying on clothes, and he paused at the foot of the stairs to soak it in. When he emerged into the kitchen, all three women looked over right away, though it was Po who smiled brightest.

“Dad, I think I found your outfit for graduation,” she said, smile so big that no good news could be coming.

Spock frowned. “How bad is it?”

“That depends on your opinion of kilts.”

They went to dinner at Jim’s diner, where Jim, too, was friendly. Spock could better spot the slightly flustered trying behind Jim’s eyes than he could with Nyota, but he appreciated their efforts all the same. That evening, after Po went to bed, he sat up in the kitchen with T’Pring, drinking slightly spiked hot chocolate.

“This was certainly worth it,” T’Pring said, stroking the sleeve of her own new, soft robe. “I deserve this.”

“Indeed,” Spock said, comfortably back in his own robe. “I believe you deserve many nice things, in point of fact.”

Her smile was slow. “No,” she said. “Well, yes, but also no. I deserve my promotion, and this robe, and the shallow friends I have on both continents. I don’t really deserve Po, not as the woman she’s growing to be.” Her smile slanted, turned sad. “And I don’t deserve you, no matter how much I wish I did, or could.”

“T’Pring…”

“Jim’s a nice man, though,” she said, and Spock tried valiantly to hold his own mouth shut. “Smart enough to keep up with you and Po, I think, and utterly devoted to you both. You would do well to make sure you keep him.”

“He is not mine for the taking,” Spock said, and T’Pring laughed.

“Dear, if you don’t think so, you actually may not deserve the comfort of that robe, as it has clearly made your formerly sharp observation skills wither.” 

“Jim is not — no matter what I might feel, he has never —“

“Spock.” T’Pring’s voice was flat, demanding. “He is as attracted to you as you are to him. Do you think he would have made such an issue out of my staying here if he wasn’t?”

“He is concerned, as a friend —“

“Perhaps,” she said, “but also as a pining suitor.” Spock raised an eyebrow. “Even your grocery store clerk knows that Jim is pining.”

“You’ve been here less than 72 hours. When did you find the time to gossip with Margary?”

“I stopped in to restock your tea — and now I know where you find this bland, horrible stuff — and I heard one employee tell the other I’m the one in town to ‘break Jim Kirk’s heart’ over you again.” Spock felt his face heat up, and he saw T’Pring smile, but gently. “I don’t doubt that he’s also your friend, but he most definitely would like to be more than just that. And as someone who has seen you in love before —“ Spock’s face now felt fire-hot, and he fought to keep meeting her eye — “I do also recognize the symptoms. You should tell him.”

“Thank you,” Spock said. “I’ll consider what you’ve said.”

“Do. All of it.” She took a sip of her drink and seemed to consider inside the mug for a moment. “I — I do mean it,” she said. “I sometimes think — I do wish this could — that we could have —“

Spock reached over, rested his hand on T’Pring’s, and felt just for a moment that flicker of desire, of love, that always drew them together. “I know,” he said, and she looked up at him fondly. “But I think our time — our bond is a different kind of bond.”

The house creaked, and they both paused. Po was in bed, though, Spock knew, and likely either asleep or under her headphones. “A bond,” T’Pring said. “Yes, I suppose that is the best way to think of it.”

“Family,” Spock said, squeezing her hand, and she smiled over the table at him.

“Always.”


	8. Action Required

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock becomes a man of action.

The gentle nudge from T’Pring wasn’t enough to convince Spock he should address his relationship directly with Jim. Instead, after her departure, and after they were back in their routine, he let what she’d said settle in his mind. He thought about it over coffee, thought about it while he and Po drove home from school, thought about it when they grabbed dinner from the diner and Jim grinned at him across a sea of customers. One morning, he thought of it while standing in line at the grocery store, watching Margary cluck her tongue at some new piece of gossip from a passerby. “Did I tell you?” she said, shaking her head as she slid a box of raisin bran into a paper bag. “I’m always right about these things.”

Spock carefully met her eyes as he checked out, keeping his face as blank as possible during the entire transaction. 

By Thursday, four days after T’Pring had flown back home, Spock felt conflicted. His actual relationship with Jim seemed the same as always: close and friendly. But now he saw the signs T’Pring had mentioned, the signs Po had mentioned, and he didn’t know what to do with that knowledge. Should he act? In the process, if he was wrong, he might make awkward his closest friendship. If he was right, he might start a relationship that ended in the destruction of that same friendship (if things didn’t work out.) But then again, who was to say things wouldn’t work out?

He needed expert advice, and he wasn’t ready to go straight to Jim. That left one unpleasant option.

After two full hours of careful, kind editing of resumes, cover letters, and online applications, Spock sat in the quiet, empty computer room for five minutes, waiting. Usually, McCoy wandered by at some point to check on things, but today had been a busy day at the center. Spock had avoided him as much as possible (which was normal behavior), but he had expected McCoy to emerge at the end of his scheduled time. He had expected a moment in which to ask his questions. Having to now take that moment was proving harder than he had planned. 

However, stalling was illogical. He stood, straightened his shirt, and crossed to McCoy’s office. The door was open, and McCoy grunted a greeting as he walked in. “Hey, thanks for your work with Rourke today," McCoy said. “Kid’s got potential, but gettin’ him to settle down for more than five minutes is like wrestling a coked-up armadillo.” Spock raised an eyebrow, refusing to picture that. “Anyway, you need something?”

“I have a question.”

“Shoot.”

“Is Jim currently seeing anyone?” Spock asked.

McCoy didn’t look up from his desk. “What am I, his secretary? I think he’s at work all afternoon.”

“That is not precisely what I meant,” Spock said, and now McCoy did look up. 

His eyes narrowed. “Oh, no.” Spock titled his head. “No, don’t you even start with this. Not when — we just got finished with this T’Pring mess.”

“’T’Pring mess,'” Spock murmured. “To what exactly are you referring, Doctor?”

“You. Her. Jim, dragging me off to that god-awful cinderblock bar in Ruston to play darts and drink himself so blind he might not notice you two makin’ eyes over breakfast.” 

“I can see coming here was a mistake,” Spock said, as much to himself as to McCoy.

“Yeah? What exactly were you thinking? You string him along —“

“I have done no such —“

“— for years, he’s got his heart completely set on you, head-over-heels in love, and you —“

“— And I would never… “ Spock stopped, replaying McCoy’s words. 

“— keep him at arm’s length, like some kind of fucking robot!” McCoy said, voice rising. 

Spock gripped the back of the chair before him, still reeling slightly. He focused on the glass paperweight on McCoy’s desk, a tiny skeleton that Jim had given him as part of some inside joke.

“What?” McCoy said, though the antagonism in his voice had faded. “You would never what, Spock?”

“I would never intentionally hurt Jim,” Spock said. “I — I did not know he — I — “ He shrugged, nearly speechless, his stomach churning. “I did not know.”

“No fucking kidding,” McCoy said, but with a tone of mild wonder. “Well, now that you do, what are you going to do about it?”

He looked up at him, saw McCoy cross his arms, a clear look of challenge on his face. It wasn’t hard, then, to picture him on a battlefield, unimpressed, raw, professional, commanding. Spock nodded, once, and turned away, walking swiftly through the empty halls and out into the cold sunshine. The diner was only two blocks away, and it was mostly empty as he crossed to a table.

“Hey, one sec," Jim called, and Spock waved without meeting his eyes. He could do this. He had to. McCoy was right. Action was needed. 

Spock took a deep breath, and then another, and then Jim was standing in front of him, smiling. He wore his usual jeans and, today, a faded green T-shirt under a blue-and-white plaid. “Good to see you,” he said, setting down a cup of coffee. Spock looked at his face, at the genuine warmth in his smile, and wondered for how long he had missed these signs. “You want anything else?”

“Are you free for a moment?”

Jim shrugged, glancing at the mostly empty diner. “Not exactly rush hour. Sure.” He leaned one hip against the chair opposite Spock. “What’s up?”

“I have been thinking about some things, in the wake of T’Pring’s visit, and some new information has been brought to my attention.”

Jim scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah? Something about Po?”

“You are in love with me,” Spock said, voice impressively steady.

“Oh,” Jim said, and he held up one finger to pause their conversation. Spock nodded, outwardly calm, as Jim disappeared briefly into the kitchen. When he came back, he wasn’t wearing his apron anymore, and he took the seat across from Spock at the table.

“Jim?” Spock said, after he had looked up and down from his clasped hands three times.

“I just thought we weren’t talking about it," Jim said in a rush. His face held the slightest pink flush. “I mean. I get that you — that you don’t — but I thought, like, it was going to go unsaid.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “It’s fine, of course. We can talk about it, sure. I guess, I mean, I know you deserve that, and I —“

“Please stop talking,” Spock said. Jim’s mouth shut with an audible click. “Jim…” He trailed off, not sure where to begin.

“Spock?”

“Did you believe I already knew?” Spock asked, voice barely a whisper.

Jim’s eyes widened. “What?”

“That you —“

“You didn’t know?” Spock shrugged helplessly. Jim made a sound like a strangled laugh. “Spock, seriously. I charge my mother for coffee.“

“You hate your mother.”

“Not entirely, and also not the point. Come on. Everyone knows this. I’ve had tour groups who figured it out over pancakes.” He rubbed his mouth with one hand. “Everyone knows this.”

“Not everyone,” Spock said, hovering between furious and overjoyed. “Not me.” 

“I —“ Jim sat back, abruptly, the air whistling out of him as though he had been deflated. “Jesus,” he said. His face had begun to pink up again, and Spock wondered if he looked the same way. The clink of glass on glass behind him reminded him of where they were, and Jim seemed to just as abruptly remember their audience. Being in the diner had never stopped them from having personal discussions before, but Spock met Jim’s eyes and knew that this was different. Jim tipped his head, and Spock nodded, then followed him without a word from the table to the back stairs that led to his apartment.

“OK,” Jim said, pushing open the door. The apartment within was small but well maintained. Though Jim had a big, messy personality, he had the habits of his military life still well ingrained, and his apartment reflected that time. The floors were plain hard wood, the walls painted a simple slate blue, and the decor was otherwise non-existent. One broad, long room held his kitchen, dining area, and living room space, and a small hallway led to two bedrooms — neither of which Spock had ever visited. That wasn’t a safe thought, he decided, and he opted for the hard security of one of Jim’s vintage 70s kitchen chairs. The vinyl seat squished as he sat, but the gold-flecked metal frame didn’t so much as squeak. It matched the formica-topped table and, strangely, the patterned drapes hanging over the window above the kitchen sink. Spock had never noticed the coordination before.

Of course, there were more important things to talk about. Spock set his coffee mug down, and Jim frowned. “I have coffee up here, too, you know.”

“Is it also free?”

Jim laughed without smiling, rubbing his face another time. “For you? Sure.”

Spock nodded. Up here, without the faint background noise of the diner, the silence between them felt heavier. A clock ticked down the hall. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I — I thought you knew,” Jim said, shrugging. He crossed to the small side table where his mail lay and picked up a rubber band ball. As he spoke, he tossed it nervously in short hops. “I’m not kidding when I say everyone knew. Po even —“

“Po?” Spock sat up straighter. “She did not.”

Jim nodded, slowly, serious. “She did. She — last Christmas, we shopped for you together, and she — she told me she knew.”

Spock frowned. It hurt that Po had known this — had had Jim’s feelings confirmed — and hadn’t told him. They would have to talk that evening. For now, he had Jim to deal with. “When did you think I had learned of this?”

“I don’t know," Jim said. The ball smacked back into his hand. “I’ve known since — well, it’s embarrassing. But, uh, when Po had her appendix out, remember?”

How could he forget? She had been in the hospital for three days, and they had included three of the longest hours of Spock’s life while they’d been separated during and after her emergency surgery. “You brought me coffee," he said, and then, more softly, “and you stayed.”

Jim nodded. He met Spock’s eyes. “Closed the diner, actually.”

Spock remembered that, though the memory was vague. He’d asked Jim how he’d managed to have so much time off, and Jim had said he was the boss, he could do what he wanted. It had been such a comfort to have him there that Spock hadn’t questioned that logic at all. 

“I figured, after that, the whole town could see right through me, and you’re sharper than all the rest of us anyway.” His smile was small but genuine, though his gaze fell away. “Anyway, then — T’Pring visited, and I got just about the world’s longest lecture on _not fucking up perfectly good friendships_ from Bones, and so I didn’t say anything. And then I just — kept on not saying anything.” He shrugged. “Guess I might not have ever said anything.”

Spock frowned. “Pardon me for saying so, but that seems somewhat out of character for you.”

Jim laughed. “I’ve never been real good with my own feelings.”

“I find I sympathize.” He offered Jim a small smile in return.

Jim set the rubber band ball back down, but stayed near the doorway. “Anyway. Now, you know, and I guess — that’s fine, too. We’ll just, I don’t need anything, or expect or — I — if things can go back to how they were, how they usually are, that’s —“

“Wait,” Spock interrupted, fighting off a grin. “Why would I want to go back to normal?” Jim’s face fell, and Spock held up one hand. “Please let me finish. I believe — that is, since we both harbor strong and, it would seem, romantic feelings for one another, it is only logical that we —“

“Back up," Jim said, sounding breathless. His eyes were wide, darker blue than usual, Spock thought. “‘We both harbor…’ Spock. You — you have — for me?”

Spock rolled his eyes. “Jim, everyone knows this.”

“Not everyone,” Jim said, and then he laughed again, but this time bright, high laughter, like pure joy had just caught him by complete surprise. Maybe it had, Spoke thought, finding his own face spreading in a matching smile. “Holy shit. Wow. So — ok. That’s — wow.”

“Thank goodness it is not your erudition that I find most attractive.”

The blue of Jim’s eyes actually seemed to sparkle. “I’m literally speechless, and you’re complaining.”

“No,” Spock said, one hand covering his heart. “I find I have zero complaints at the moment.”

“I have a few," Jim said, but he was grinning. He sat across from Spock at the table, and for a long moment, they just studied one another. Then Jim said, “So what do we do now?”

Spock raised an eyebrow, trying to look serious and like his heart wasn’t pounding. “I believe we both go back to work.”

“I meant — you know what I meant, you jerk. Just, huh.” Jim looked at him and shook his head. “So. You, uh, you wanna, maybe we should go out on a date sometime.”

“A date.”

Jim nodded vigorously. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure this is a good idea. A real date. Dinner, the works.”

“Have we not eaten enough meals in one another’s company over the years to know —“

“Nuh-uh,” Jim said, rubbing his hands together. “You put me through years of wishing and hoping and waiting, and I’m gonna get my date.”

“All right. Tonight?”

“I like the way you’re thinking,” Jim said, “but no. I need a few days to plan, and like, get my shit together.”

“That last is certainly not a requirement,” Spock said, “as I do not want to wait forever to, ah, discuss further the possibilities for our relationship.”

Jim licked his lips. “Me, either. But — one date. Saturday, say, 7. You can hold out, right?”

Spock sat up straighter. “I don’t believe it’s my capacity for patience that should —“

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a saint, I know,” Jim said, but as he said it, he nudged Spock’s hand with his own on the tabletop. They both stared down at it, where Jim’s curled fingers brushed against Spock’s pale skin. Of course, he had touched Jim before, in handshakes and holiday hugs, in casual touches when exchanging coffee cups, in accidental jostles walking side-by-side down narrow sidewalks. And Jim had never been particularly shy about touching anyone, really: he was tactile with his friends and family and always ready with a supportive arm around the shoulders. This was different, though, in the tantalizing _soon soon soon_ that thrummed immediately between. It matched, somehow, the rapidly increasing beat of Spock’s heart.

“Saturday,” Jim murmured, and then he reached over and squeezed Spock’s hand, just quickly, before he drew back and away.

“One date,” Spock said, and Jim nodded, holding up both hands.

“One excellent date," he promised. 

As Spock left the diner a few moments later, a travel mug of coffee in his hands, he couldn’t stop smiling. One excellent date, he thought, and then — one excellent future.


	9. Friends (Almost) Always Welcome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Date prep: It takes a village.
> 
> Check the end notes for a mild warning.

When Po returned home that evening, Spock already had dinner ready at their kitchen table. “But it’s Thursday,” she said, eyeing the paper cartons of Chinese food in confusion. “Tater Tot Thursday.”

Spock nodded. “I thought we might engage in a spontaneous re-arrangement of our patterns.” Po kept staring at him, though she narrowed her eyes. “Also, I wanted to talk to you in a setting somewhat less public than Al’s Pancake House.”

“Uh oh,” she said. “Bad news?”

“No,” Spock said, “decidedly not. With that assurance, would you please come and join me for dinner instead of staring at me from the doorway as though I might yet decide to hurl the silverware at you?”

Po rolled her eyes but did walk into the room. “Since you’ve forgotten to set out any silverware, I don’t feel very threatened.” She paused to grab a can of Coke from the fridge, then took the seat across from Spock. They reviewed the contents of all of the cartons together, then each took their standard favorites. Po dug into Pepper Beef with her chopsticks, while Spock started on a container of egg drop soup.

“Dad, spring rolls and egg rolls? Seriously, did we win the lottery?” she asked, poking at a greasy sack with one chopstick.

“Our financial situation remains unchanged,” he said.

“Do you really want to make me guess?”

“Yes, actually," he said, “but I won’t. I spoke with Jim at the diner today.”

Po shrugged. “Like every day.”

“Yes, except today I — your mother encouraged me to speak with Jim about whether, possibly…” Spock stared at his spoon, unsure why he was still holding it. “She overheard someone at the store saying that Jim was, that he was interested in, and had at length considered, the possibility of our being suitable —“

“Oh my god,” Po said, chopsticks forgotten. “You asked Jim out?”

“In point of fact, I believe he asked me," Spock said, watching Po’s hands fly over her mouth.

“Oh my god oh my god, Dad, that’s — wait, did you say yes? You said yes, right?”

“Indeed,” he said, and then Po was out of her chair. 

She embraced him in a tight but lightning quick hug before twirling in some kind of elaborate victory dance. “It’s about time!” she said, grinning, both hands thrown in the air. “I mean, I probably owe Mom twenty bucks now, but —“

“You bet money with your mother on whether Jim and I would go on a date?”

“Basically.” She fell back into her chair. “OK, so tell me everything. What did he say, what did you say, what were you both wearing, when is the date and where, and does anyone else know?”

“In reverse: No, Saturday evening, my second-best suit with the gray tie, and I suspect the transcript would bore you.”

“I doubt that,” she said. She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Dad, I’m so happy for you. And proud! Good for you, actually talking to him about it.” 

“Thank you. Though - I’m led to believe that you may have already known that Jim was interested in me.”

Po shrugged. “Only as much as the entire town has been awash in your latent desire since, like, forever.” Spock narrowed his eyes. “You told me you thought he was hot.”

“I may have commented upon his physical attributes, yes —“

“And that you weren’t ever going to do anything about it.” Spock frowned, trying to recall when he’d said that. Po’s voice grew softer. “After Matthew.”

Matthew. The stock broker. They had seemed so compatible online, after all, and while he hated to think of it now, Spock had perhaps let his hopes get up a bit about that. “I don’t remember saying anything that would have pertained to Jim specifically.”

“Maybe not,” she said, “but there were some general rules set about never dating humans again that seemed to include his chances.” Now she smiled, a slightly too-wise smile that somehow reminded Spock of his own mother. “Anyway, I figured you’d grow out of it, but I was betting I’d have to actually leave home before it would happen.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Leave for where? I thought we had agreed it was logical for you to remain here and attend the college of your choice through correspondence, caring for me in my bachelor decline.”

“Mm-hm. Hey, let’s call Jim now, maybe he can solve the bachelor problem right away? Clearly, it’s too late to stop the inevitable decline.”

He allowed himself a small smile. “I may still have the presence of mind to eat that egg roll, if you’re not going to.”

“Deal.” As she passed it over, she squeezed his hand. “Seriously, though. This is cool, Dad. I’m — I’m really glad.”

“As, I find, am I.” He began to cut into the egg roll with a fork, having maintained what Po assured him was an overly fussy aversion to having grease on his hands since his youth. “For the time being, I would appreciate it if you would not, perhaps, mention this to anyone — except your mother, of course, though you are welcome to manipulate the story to your own financial benefit for her, if need be.”

Po grinned and snagged the other egg roll. “Secret’s safe with me.”

* * *

Of course, everyone in town knew about the date by the next day. “I do not understand,” Spock said, as Nyota handed him a bowl of “taco-inspired quinoa.” “I have not told anyone.”

“I doubt Jim’s told anyone, either,” she said, handing Spock a spoon. 

He took a dutiful bite and nodded his approval, and she grinned, triumphant. “I find this delicious, Nyota, but I think the Quilting Society may want a tad less cayenne pepper.” 

“You would think that,” she said, snatching the bowl back, “but they’re actually a pretty spicy bunch! When they were in here last month, they ate every single one of those Sriracha chocolate cakes I made, and the president asked for the recipe.” She set the bowl down, directed her nearest aid to begin rolling out tortillas, and then ushered Spock toward the porch. She followed with two cups of coffee and sat down next to him on a bench facing the back gardens. “I think those ladies will love that. None of which is relevant at all to this conversation: You’re dating Jim.”

“We are not exactly dating,” Spock said. He tried to keep his voice even by focusing on the landscape. They would need to have someone touch up the topiary in the south corner, he thought. “We have agreed to go on one date.”

Nyota raised one eyebrow. “Like a try-out? Haven’t you been trying each other out, so to speak, for like the past decade?”

Spock sipped his coffee. “Apparently.”

“So — just a date because people should date? Are you sticking to the third date rule here or something?”

Spock hadn’t even considered that Jim would want to wait to begin their physical relationship. He found himself actually fifty percent terrified and fifty percent embarrassingly lustful at the idea of a physical intimacy, actually. “I sincerely hope not,” Spock admitted, keeping his voice low, and he revised his estimations to 30/70.

Nyota snickered. “Well, I’m so happy for you. For both of you. It’s about damn time.” 

He allowed himself a small grin back. “Thank you.”

“So how did this happen, anyway? At the diner, I know, you mentioned — but what did you say, and what did he say? Did you at least kiss or stare into his eyes or…”

And so he recounted it for her, from the first confirmation of Jim’s feelings to Spock’s own, and Nyota’s smile grew. “This is actually sweet, in a really moronic way,” she said. “You two idiots deserve each other.”

“I believe there was a second congratulations in there,” Spock said, and she laughed.

“What does Po think?”

“Her reaction is similar to yours,” he said. “She apparently felt that I was conflicted about my feelings and had chosen not to act.”

“Was she right?” Nyota asked, tone suddenly gentle.

Spock began to deny it, then paused to think. He had been conflicted, of course. He’d believed that making any overture toward Jim might carry the danger of damaging their friendship, and that danger wasn’t completely over. “I will admit, I did not and still do not want to do anything that could have a negative effect on our current friendship.”

“Ah," she said. “Well, luckily, he loves you back, so you should be safe, right?” When Spock just fixed her with a look, she grinned. “Think positive for once, Spock! This is going to be great. So, when’s your date?”

“Saturday night,” he said. “I am otherwise engaged tonight, of course, and he wanted a few days to plan.” He frowned. “Should that concern me?”

“Absolutely,” Nyota said, with a mischievous smile. “Don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t be too dangerous. And hey, you have decent health insurance, right?”

“This is not helping,” Spock said, but he kissed her cheek before he returned to work.

After that, Spock spent the day wondering not whether dating Jim was a good idea but whether going on a date under Jim’s control was a good plan. When he walked to the diner for an early lunch, in order to be out of Nyota’s hair, conversation stalled around him, and he thought he heard a table of regulars coo. Jim rolled his eyes as he passed over a cinnamon roll and a travel cup. “Ignore them,” he said. “And, also, I’ll be out this afternoon, if you were going to come by.”

“I will likely be tied up until it is time to leave for my parents’ house,” Spock said. 

“Oh! Right. Well — see you tomorrow, then,” Jim said, then, “I meant, tomorrow, you know, whenever. Uh, for breakfast, if you guys want, or — in the evening, I, ha.” He shook his head. “I mean, ten to one odds, I’ll have found my brain by then.”

“I do wish you luck in that endeavor,” Spock said, but he smiled. “And I shall see you tomorrow."

Back at the Inn, Sulu laughed into his phone as Spock approached, saying in a voice he likely thought was quiet enough, “OK, OK, but he’s here now, I have to —“ before hanging up. Spock tried to detour to the kitchen, but Nyota blocked his path, explaining she had a sensitive “never-you-mind, lover-boy” project in the works. “I promise to bring you coffee on the hour,” she said, and Spock turned, slightly mollified, back to his own office.

There, he shuffled through paperwork and tried to convince himself that he was not, at all, in any way, nervous over the prospect of going on a date with Jim. It was just dinner, after all. Probably just dinner — unless Jim had come up with something really bizarre. Should he eat beforehand? No, no — if Jim was asking for Nyota’s help, there was certainly food involved. And they had eaten countless meals together in the last decade. It was just another meal, another conversation, another good time to be had. Just because it was also the possible beginning to a life-changing shift in the second-most significant relationship in his life… that didn’t logically change the situation, did it?

Neither deep breaths nor paperwork managed to distract him from this.

However, just before he was set to leave for Po’s school, the ringing of his phone did. His mother was on the other end. “Spock, I’m so sorry to bother you and on such late notice, but I wondered if we could reschedule our dinner for this evening.”

Strangely, Spock had been looking forward to the trip to his parents’ house that night. He hadn’t actually been looking forward to seeing them, or experiencing the stilted conversation, but he had considered it to be a likely four hours where his mind would not be completely focused on Jim and worst-case date scenarios. “Of course,” he said.

“Would tomorrow night work?”

“I’m sorry,” Spock said, “I have a prior engagement. We could meet for lunch on Sunday, perhaps?”

“Oh, perhaps brunch,” his mother said. “If that works for you, then yes. Say 11?”

“That will do. We shall see you then.”

“Thank you, Spock.” Her gratitude continued to ring in his ears, even after they’d hung up. That did prove to be slightly distracting, at least, as did the realization that he had no idea why his mother had canceled dinner. 

When he picked up Po from school and gave her the news, she frowned. “Darn,” she said. “I gotta admit, I was looking forward to you telling them about your date.”

“Under no circumstances would I do such a thing,” Spock said, pulling onto the highway. 

Po just laughed. “Whatever. Grandpa would bring up some political issue that you want to avoid, you’d try to get me to talk more about school, boring, Grandma would laugh and try to get Grandpa to talk about something else, you’d dig in your heels, and ten minutes later as a distraction or maybe to piss him off, you’d tell them you’re dating Jim.”

Spock opened his mouth to dispute this, but — there was little to critique. “We do not usually disagree on politics,” he said, finally, and knew Po was rolling her eyes without looking over.

“Why are we driving toward Bridgewater?”

“Ah. Because we have the evening free,” Spock said.

“Mmhm. Try again.”

“Because I cannot take another moment under the town’s scrutiny,” he said, and Po nodded. 

“Reasonable. Also, while we’re here, we can get you a new shirt.”

Spock glanced down. This was his third-best shirt, plain sky blue with thin threads of turquoise that made it pop. “Is something wrong with this shirt?”

“Eh,” she said, “it’s fine, but you need a date shirt.”

This was something Spock had not considered. Well, he had briefly considered what he would wear the next evening, and he had settled on his second best suit. In fact, he’d made sure all of the pieces were clean and ready just that morning. His major concern had been whether it would be too dressed up. “A date shirt," Spock echoed. “How would this differ from a regular shirt?”

“It would be special,” Po said, speaking slowly, as though this might be Spock’s first time with the language, “because you would wear it on this date.”

It turned out that Po’s idea of a date shirt was simply a new, albeit expensive, dress shirt. She frowned and cajoled and critiqued and then, finally, cheered when Spock came out of the fitting room in a slim-fit black dress shirt with a slightly wider collar and cuffs than he would have chosen on his own. “Yes. Dad, yes,” she said, reaching up to undo a second button at his throat. “Perfect.”

“I’m not —“

“I am,” she said. “Trust me. And if you don’t, you can also take the opinion of the two salesladies and one sales guy who are currently trying to contain their drooling.”

Spock did briefly catch the eye of an admiring clerk, and he stifled a laugh. The shirt was smooth, almost shiny, and close-fitting, whispering slightly when he moved. He closed his eyes and imagined, briefly and luxuriously, what Jim’s hands might look like bunched up in the fabric. It would be a good look. “Very well,” he said, looking around again. “Unless it is your belief that I need to acquire anything else?”

Po looked him up and down critically. “You’ll wear your dark jeans and the black heavy dress shoes, right?”

That had not been his plan, but he understood she was not asking a question, not really. “Do you have some foreknowledge of where I am going tomorrow night?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, “though not for lack of trying. Jeans, Dad, you promise?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’re good.” She grinned at him. “I’m so proud.”

“Perhaps you’d consider a vow of silence as your celebration.” She laughed. Spock tried not to pay attention to the shirt’s price as it rung up. He would need to start wearing it daily to the the Inn just to get his money’s worth.

“Jim’s gonna love it,” Po said as they walked out.

Well. That would make it worth the price, too.

* * *

The next day would have passed with agonizing slowness, but suddenly everyone in Stars Hollow needed to speak with Spock about something. First, the mayor stopped by to make certain that the Inn could still provide its traditional pumpkin donation for the fall carnival.

“It is still held in the fall, is it not?” Spock had asked, non-plussed, staring over the counter at Taylor.

“Er, ah, yes, of course, just before Halloween, but I wanted to be sure we had absolutely clear communication on the matter. You never can be too careful.”

Spock nodded, but he hadn’t missed Taylor’s slight blush. “I am certain we will be able to accommodate our usual donation. Was there anything else?”

“No, no,” Taylor said, but he lingered just long enough to make it clear this wasn’t true. Spock returned to his current project of surveying guest requests from the past few days, waiting him out, wondering what could have possibly brought Taylor into the Inn. Usually, he let the Inn exist in its own protected world, probably because he was terrified of Admiral Pike and also, possibly, because their contributions to the town through local hospitality taxes were significant. The few times he had made a point of visiting because of the presence of some VIP or other would have been disastrous if Spock hadn’t been able to play his presence off as part of their quirky small-town charm. 

That morning, though, Spock thought he could do with less small town quirkiness and more silence. In fact, he could do with more coffee, too, a thought that brightened him considerably. Just because they had a date later in the day didn’t mean Jim’s Diner was off limits, certainly. Spock clicked out of the spreadsheet and called Sulu back to the desk.

“Coffee break?” Sulu asked, eyebrow raised, and Spock nodded.

“Would you like me to bring you anything back?”

“Donut, if he’s got any,” Sulu said, and Spock nodded. He walked back to his office to get his wallet, and when he turned, he found Taylor entirely too close behind him. “Taylor, what are you doing?”

“Going to get coffee, eh? At Jim’s Diner?” Taylor was speaking too loudly, angling his mouth toward the dining room though his eyes stayed on Spock. “Seems like a long way to walk for coffee. You have coffee here!”

“I do,” Spock said, herding Taylor out of the office and back into the neutral space of the lobby, “but weekend mornings are Nyota’s busiest, and it isn’t sensible to bother her until lunch service has concluded.” And after that, it was usually only sensible to bother her if one was holding a bottle of decent wine, but Spock didn’t want to get into that. “Did you need something before I go?”

“Ah, no, I just — look, maybe Sulu should go," Taylor said. “Strapping young lad like that, probably needs to stretch his legs. Right, Hikaru?”

“Please leave me out of whatever is happening,” Sulu said, and Spock mentally co-signed that idea.

“I’m sure he is fine, here.” Taylor was now glancing at the dining room frantically in a way that, on any rational human, would have signaled some kind of monster or fire looming behind him. Spock sighed and turned: he found Miss Patty, the town dance instructor, and Babette, his neighbor, seated together at a small four-top in the corner of the room. Behind him (still, too close), Taylor sighed.

“Mornin’ sugar,” Babette said, grinning up at him over a china cup of tea.

“Good morning, ladies," Spock said. All around them, the quiet hum of normal brunch service reminded Spock to stay as calm as possible. “I trust you’re doing well.”

“Aw, just peachy,” Babette said.

“Yes. It seemed like a good morning for a bit of variety,” Patty said, waving her hands expansively. 

“I love these muffins!” Babette said. “Taylor, have you tried the muffins?”

Spock frowned. “You have all been here before,” he said, “and of course, our doors are always open to friends, but — I am left to wonder if your coordinated presence holds any particular meaning.”

“Meaning?” Patty laughed, too heavily. “Ah, no, what could we mean by simply having a charming breakfast here?”

“Charming! Yes, that’s the word for it. All charming. Great place. Here, why don’t you sit and enjoy it some, too?” Babette nudged a chair toward Spock.

So far, the other diners hadn’t noticed them, but Spock wasn’t sure anyone wanted this much local color during breakfast. “I do appreciate the invitation, but I shall have to decline.”

“No, really, it’s — you know, it can be really useful for a proprietor to view his own business from the customer level,” Taylor said. “As a proprietor myself —“

“I have no doubt,” Spock said, smoothly and kindly and exactly as he had practiced over years of dealing with difficult people, “and would of course appreciate any feedback you can provide after your experience.” He wished them all a pleasant morning and started to turn, but Taylor blocked his path. So Spock turned back to the ladies and raised a single eyebrow, waiting.

“It’s not our idea,” Babette finally said.

“What is not?”

“Only we had no idea that you’d go to work on a day like this," Patty said, as though this explained.

“A day like — oh,” Spock said, and then he wondered if he blushed. “This has to do with my impending date.” All three heads nodded. Spock rubbed his forehead. At least one table was now paying attention. Perhaps he should have installed a television in the dining room, after all. He tried to keep his voice low. “Did Jim ask you —“

“No!” Patty and Babette’s simultaneous exclamations made the people seated at the table behind them jump. Spock sighed. “He didn’t say a thing, but he didn’t have to. He’s been plannin’ all today and yesterday, tryin’ to get everything just perfect, and —“

“And we wanted to preserve the surprise. The romance!” Patty fanned her face. “It’s too sweet.”

“I see,” Spock said, though he didn’t. He did understand, though, that the constant surveillance of the entire town would make getting any real work done nearly impossible for the rest of the day. “Am I allowed to return home, or is only the Inn safe?”

“Of course you can go home!” Babette said. “Just let me grab my purse and get a couple of these muffins to go.”

Once Babette had escorted him back to his house, and after he had waved off her offer to come over and look through albums of Morrie’s tour days, he found Po waiting on the couch. “Took you long enough,” she said, when Spock sat beside her.

He let his head fall to the back of the couch. “I was supposed to work today.”

She shrugged. “No one in town was going to let that happen.” He heard the rustle of paper and then of plastic. “I got all of your favorites. Full-force distraction afternoon.”

Spock looked over. She had spread two recent copies of Scientific American on the couch and had just opened a bag of off-brand cheese puffs. The television flipped on in the background, already tuned to the soothing sounds of the National Geographic channel. “And I loaded Contact into the DVD player, just in case.”

“This is a vast improvement over Taylor breathing down my neck,” Spock said, and smiled. “Thank you.”

So they spent the afternoon together, curled on opposite ends of the couch, comfortably quiet and studious. Po had her homework spread before her, and Spock enjoyed his magazines. They fought for cheese puffs occasionally and, then, about who would need to clean them from the floor. When it was time for a late lunch, Po produced bottled lemonade and pre-cooked macaroni and cheese in plastic trays. It was a delightful afternoon, and the time passed quietly and surprisingly quickly. At 6, Po nudged Spock with one foot. “Time to start getting ready,” she said.

Spock frowned. “It will take me 10 minutes to dress. Jim is not due until 7.”

Po rolled her eyes. “Take a shower,” she commanded, “and give your hair some time to dry. Plus however will I dye your eyes to match your gown without a full hour?”

Showering sounded reasonable, Spock thought, and he stood. He tucked the magazine onto the bookshelf, then turned. “Thank you," he said. “This was an excellent idea.”

Po grinned, a bright, wide smile that Spock had only rarely seen on his own face. “And an excellent distraction, huh?”

“That, too.” He tipped his head to one side. “Are you — do you have any concerns about this date?”

“Me? No,” Po said. Her smile became less broad, more genuine, and a little sheepish. “Honestly, I’ve been cheering for this for a while, you know that.”

“But…”

She shrugged. One sneaker-clad toe suddenly rubbed against the floor, a tell-tale sign of nervousness. “But I guess — I guess, today, sitting around here with you, just the two of us, I realized this might mean less of that in the future.”

Spock shook his head. “No matter what happens tonight or any night, we can always do this. I will always have time for you.”

“I know.” She crossed to him and hugged him, and Spock hugged back, pressing his cheek to the top of her head. “But I also know this could mean some changes.”

“Yes,” Spock said, “but for the good, let’s hope.”

“For the best,” Po said. “Now, go get showered. You know Jim’s always early.”

And he was. Forty-five minutes later, after Po had styled his hair (and Spock had unstyled it), after he had changed into his date clothes, after Patty and Babette had shown up half-drunk on the porch just to find out what he was wearing, and after even T’Pring had sent Spock a good luck text, the doorbell rang.

“Early,” Po said, and shook her head. “There goes all that time I needed for the birds-and-bees talk.”

“Perhaps I should hear your speech, anyway, if you believe I am uninformed on the topic,” Spock said, giving her a meaningful look, and she laughed. He crossed to the front door and opened it, willing himself not to be nervous.

But that was impossible, because outside his front door stood Jim Kirk, wearing form-fitting black slacks and an almost-olive green sweater that hugged his broad shoulders, grinning in a strangely devastating way, and holding —

“I have wanted this all day,” Spock said, accepting a large paper cup of coffee.

Jim’s grin flashed wider, and he took a sip of his own. “Good to see you, too.” He looked Spock up and down. “Very good.”

“Please come in,” Spock said, “before Babette manages to capture any of this on video.”

Inside, Po looked at Jim and whistled, and (after handing her a coffee) Jim did a twirl. Spock did not regret that view. “I thought, you know, it’s a little dressed up for Al’s, but —“

“I will fire you if that’s actually where you’re going,” Po said, leading them toward the kitchen. “Fired, fired, fired.”

“Fired from what position?” Jim asked, leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen.

Po batted her eyelashes. “Potential step-mommy?”

Spock nearly choked on his coffee, but Jim just laughed. “Have to ace the interview first, I think.”

“Not a bad letter of introduction,” Spock said, raising his cup.

Jim’s grin was still devastating. “Here’s to experience.” 

Before Spock could say more, he heard his cell phone ring in the other room. He groaned.

Po grinned. “Dad’s been hounded all day. How about you?”

“Had to chase Taylor off the doorstep before opening. Wanted all the details of tonight.” Jim shrugged. “He offered to make sure none of the surprises were spoiled, but I never told him what the surprises would be, so — I wasn’t sure how he planned to make that happened. Didn’t really care, though, as long as he went away.”

“He came to the Inn,” Spock said. “It was interesting.”

“I bet.”

Spock took another sip of coffee. Jim looked very good, and Spock realized this was probably the most dressed up he’d ever actually seen him. “Are there surprises?”

“Guess you’ll find out.” 

“Should I — “ Spock’s question was interrupted as Po’s cell phone rang. She frowned and fished it from her pocket, while Spock looked down at his own jeans. Jim was wearing neatly pressed _slacks_. He had on dress shoes. Shined dress shoes. Spock tried to think of a time that he’d seen Jim in anything other than jeans and drew a blank. “Am I dressed appropriately?” he asked.

“You look great,” Jim said.

“Thank you. I —“

“Dad, it’s Grandpa’s number,” Po said, handing him her phone.

Spock’s first thought was deeply uncharitable: Of course, of course, his father would find a way to interfere in what should have otherwise been an entirely enjoyable and carefree night. He nearly declined the call, but at the last moment, thumbed the accept button. “Hello.”

“Ah, Spock.” His father’s voice seemed to come slightly more quickly than usual. “It is fortunate that I have found you, although I did try your phone number first and received no reply.”

“Yes,” Spock said. “Are you calling to confirm tomorrow’s time?”

“No. I am — I suppose I am calling to cancel our brunch.”

“I see.” Jim was idly sipping his coffee, and now turning to whisper something to Po. She laughed. Spock felt a rush of warmth for them both. 

“Your mother,” his father said, and then his voice was briefly muffled. “I must cancel because your mother is in the hospital. I am calling from the hospital because your mother — she has had a heart attack.”

After that, Spock knew his father spoke more. He knew he spoke in return, asking several important questions and receiving satisfactory answers: the name of the hospital, his mother’s current status, Sarek’s own location. However, it soon blurred, the words fading just after Spock had hung up the phone. He put a hand on Po’s shoulder, swallowing before he spoke. Both she and Jim now looked concerned, the light-hearted teasing of a few moments before completely lost. “Your grandmother has had a heart attack,” he said, and Po gasped. Beside him, he heard Jim mutter a short curse. “She is in the process of being admitted to Vulcan County General Hospital. Her condition is serious.”

“Is she going to be OK?” Po asked.

Sarek’s unsteady voice had told Spock this was not at all a settled matter, but he spoke firmly, comfortingly. “Yes. But we should make our way to the hospital right now.” As he said the words, he understood what they meant: the date was off, and this seemed both unpleasant and terribly minor, faced with this news. He turned to Jim, not sure what to say, and found him holding up his car keys. 

“I’ll drive you,” he said. 

“You don’t —“

“Sure, I do," Jim said, and he rested a hand, easy, warm, on Spock’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t be driving, not after a shock like that. Besides, car’s all clean anyway.”

Later, Spock would remember how Jim never questioned for a moment that this was where Spock needed to be, that he didn’t mention their date or the planning or anything except what he could do to make things better. At the moment, though, he was so grateful for this comfort that he felt tears prick at the edge of his eyes. Blinking rapidly, he nodded, and minutes later he was tucked into the front seat of Jim’s car, Po scrunched into the back, for the 40-minute drive to Vulcan County.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mention of serious health problems/hospitalization for a side character.


	10. Cafeteria Coffee and Combat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Family dinner in a new (and unpleasant location): now with Jim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of hospitalization/parental illness.

When they arrived, Jim dropped them at the emergency room entrance and went to park the car. Spock put an arm around Po’s shoulders as they walked in, the chill of the interior striking them at once. They paused on the threshold, and Spock spared a moment to wish they were at least on familiar territory, like Bridgetown’s St. Luke’s Hospital where Po’s appendix had been removed. VC was much bigger, much fancier, and much better funded, of course. Spock tried to see that as an advantage.

They were directed to the cardiac care waiting area on the fourth floor, and Spock spared a moment to text Jim the information before they caught the elevator. Po rested her head on his shoulder. “I don’t like the way hospitals smell," she said.

“No one does.” As the elevator rose, he said, “This is the hospital where you were born.”

“Oh. Huh.” The doors opened onto a small lobby that could have been lifted from a mid-level hotel. A large arrangement of bright, fake flowers sat on a small table before them, and functionally firm but tasteful carpet ran the length of the hall. They followed the signs to a small waiting area, which held two leather-like couches, a collection of arm chairs and magazine-covered tables, two flat-screen TVs, and Sarek, pacing.

He looked over when they arrived, and Spock fought the urge to straighten his posture. Sarek wore a tan sweater over gray slacks, and Spock’s impression was that he had dressed quickly, though he wasn’t sure why. “Ah,” Sarek said, but nothing more.

Spock rubbed one hand up and down Po’s arm, then said, “How is she?”

“I have not had an update in 23 minutes,” Sarek said, “though according to this, she is currently waiting for another scan.” He gestured to one of the televisions, which had a brightly colored grid over it. Spock realized the rows must align to patient identification numbers of some kind, but he didn’t spend any time figuring it out. 

“I’m sure they’ll come soon,” Po said, voice quiet and, Spock knew, trying to be comforting. 

“Yes,” Spock said, at the same time his father said it. Sarek added, “Thank you, Po. I thought perhaps you would be better able to decode this display than I am.” His mouth lifted briefly into something that was nearly a smile. “Your grandmother is usually my on-site technical support, as you know.”

“Sure,” Po said, and she walked over to study the monitor with him. Spock watched in fascination. He had expected his father to be — well, terrible. Sarek did not usually deal well with situations beyond his control, and he was no great fan of hospitals, either. Spock had spent the drive to the hospital ignoring the actual worst case scenario in favor of considering the more likely and more immediate problem of trying to comfort his emotionally-allergic father. 

Apparently, the answer was Po. By the time Jim arrived, 15 minutes later, Po and Sarek were seated at the small chess table in the corner of the room, engrossed in match. Spock was watching them over the top of a very old Parents magazine.

“Hey,” Jim said, and offered a large coffee from a carrying tray. “Extra cream, because who knows what it’s like.”

“Thank you,” Spock said, and felt his face begin to heat up. How had he not understood until this very moment that he had brought a date to the hospital to meet his father? Could anyone look at Jim right now and not understand what kind of evening he’d been dressed up for? Spock fought the urge to button up his own collar as Jim walked over to the chess table. 

“Oh, thank you,” Po said, accepting her coffee. Spock stood and walked over, ready to make an introduction — and not sure what he would say — when Jim took it out of his hands.

“Sir, I wasn’t sure what you’d like, but I remembered your wife liked Earl Gray. So I have a coffee or a tea, here, if either one sounds appealing.” Sarek stared up at him, expression inscrutable. Jim didn’t budge. “I’m Jim Kirk, by the way.”

“Ah,” Sarek said. He looked back at the board. “The tea, please. Thank you.”

“How did you know Grandma likes tea?” Po asked.

Now, Jim blinked, and Spock stepped up beside him. “I must have mentioned it," he said, giving Po a clear _drop it for now_ glance. 

“Hm,” she said, then turned back to the game.

“Oh, finally found some competition, have you?” Jim said. 

Po shook her head. “Grandpa says he’s rusty. Don’t worry, I’m taking full advantage, like you taught me.”

Sarek looked up. “You taught Po to play chess?”

Jim shrugged. “She’s a natural.”

“Not good enough to beat you.”

“Yet,” Jim allowed, and Po smiled, just slightly.

“Mr. Grayson?”

They turned as one as a white-coated doctor advanced into the room. “I’m Dr. Frankin. I’ve been working with Amanda.”

The news, it turned out, was mostly good. Though she had suffered a mild heart attack, the damage seemed to be limited, and the blockage could likely be cleared with a minimally invasive procedure. Though she wasn’t out of danger completely, she was stable and would only need to be in the ICU for a day or so. Spock hadn’t realized how worried he was until his body seemed to sag at the news that his mother would be OK. Jim put a steadying hand on his elbow.

“Thank you,” Sarek said, drawn up to full formal posture now. “May I see her?”

“Yes,” the doctor said, “but one or two at a time, for now.”

Sarek started to follow the doctor and then, after only a moment’s pause, turned and gestured for Po to follow him. She glanced at Spock as she walked by, and he urged her to follow. It would certainly do his mother good to see her, and he could follow after. Besides, it gave him a moment to absorb what he’d just heard. He sank onto the couch, put down his coffee, and rested his head in his hands, trying to breathe evenly. She would be fine. Everything would be fine.

Jim’s hand rested gently in the middle of his back, rubbing soothing circles. “It’s gonna be fine,” he said. “I know it’s hard to believe that, though.”

Spock looked over. “I am sorry about our date,” he said, then blushed. He hadn’t really meant to say it, but every other emotional statement seemed too difficult.

“We’ll have others.” His casual confidence eased something in Spock’s chest. “Besides, this is where you need to be, so it’s where I want to be. Aw, your blush is too cute.” The back of Jim’s fingers briefly brushed Spock’s warm cheek. 

Spock closed his eyes. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

Po returned about ten minutes later, reporting that Amanda looked tired but was in good spirits. “She asked for a few things from home, and I told Grandpa we could pick them up.” She looked at Spock, then at Jim. “I hope that’s OK.”

“It’s no problem,” Jim said, standing. “You wanna go now? Spock, should we grab you some food on the way back, or do you think you’ll catch dinner here with your dad?”

Spock frowned. He understood that it was logical that he should stay — he hadn’t seen his mother yet and wanted to, and his father likely shouldn’t be by himself even if he would act as though Spock’s presence was an imposition. However, he felt unhappy at facing the prospect of being at the hospital without Po or Jim. “I’m uncertain,” he said. “Please text me along the way.”

Jim nodded. He squeezed Spock’s shoulder, then stepped back while Po gave him a hug. “It’s going to be fine,” she murmured, and Spock nodded. 

“Hurry back.”

“You have keys, kid?” Jim asked.

“Grandpa said Marguerite will let us in.”

Jim glanced back at Spock, one eyebrow raised. “Oh, she will? Marguerite, eh? Can’t wait.” 

Spock tried to ignore his sense of foreboding as he left the waiting room and walked toward his mother’s room. After all, Jim knew from where he came and in what level of wealth he’d been raised. The Embassy would be no big surprise to him, surely, and it was a kindness that he would take Po back to gather things for his mother. 

At the door to her private room, Spock took a deep breath, then pushed the wide wooden door open. His mother did look tired. She had no makeup on that he could see, leaving her pale and somehow smaller than usual, and under the thin hospital gown she looked bird-thin, too old. Her eyes lit up when she saw him, though, and Spock felt guilty and relieved all at once. Sarek sat on the far side of her bed, chair turned to face her, and he did not turn when Spock entered. 

“Hello, Mother.”

“Spock.” She held out one hand over the bed rail, and he took it, surprised to find it warm. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

“How are you?” 

They made small talk for a few minutes. She reported feeling fine but very tired and, of all things, apologized for missing brunch the next day. “Po was so kind to offer to gather my things. It seems impossible that she’s old enough to drive!”

“I do agree,” Spock said, “though she did not go on her own. We were driven here by a friend of ours. Jim Kirk.”

“Oh, yes, your father mentioned he was here.” Amanda smiled, just briefly. “Is he a, ah, friend? Boyfriend? Partner?”

Spock spared a few seconds to wonder what he should say, then said what he wanted to: “Yes.” He didn’t miss the small upward tilt of her smile. 

“Well, I hope you’ll let us meet him in better circumstances sometime, then,” she said. 

“I, too, would be interested in such an opportunity,” his father said, and Spock was momentarily struck dumb. 

“Perhaps a Friday dinner.” Amanda’s voice was faint. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. Would you make sure your father has something to eat?”

“Of course,” Spock said. 

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, but — would you — maybe you and Po would visit again, though?”

“Every day,” Spock promised, and he saw his mother’s eyes tear up. 

“I love you, darling,” she said, so soft Spock wasn’t sure if he was supposed to have heard it.

“I love you, as well, Mother,” he said, and watched her eyes slide closed. Spock squeezed his mother’s hand before he left. 

In the hallway, he stood still for a few moments, unsure of what to do next. Po had texted that she and Jim had arrived at Spock’s parents’ house, so it would be at least 45 minutes before they returned. He should grab some food from the cafeteria, he knew, but he didn’t know whether to wait for his father or to simply bring him something. Really, he needed just a moment to decompress. His mother had seemed so small and fragile in her hospital bed. She had seemed improbably old, though he knew she wasn’t, not really, only 30 years older than he was. Sixty-three didn’t seem so old; his father certainly didn’t look 68. Then again, he’d missed so many of the intervening years; no wonder he still thought of them as squarely middle-aged. 

The door opened behind him, and Spock turned to find his father there. “Your mother is adamant that I obtain food,” he said, hands linking behind his back. “While I am uncertain of the quality of the food here, I am quite sure we will find a vast quantity of it in the cafeteria, if you would like to accompany me.”

They must look so strange, Spock thought, two men standing so stiffly at attention in the hallway, facing each other in identical postures, both blank-faced as though discussing military strategy. It was just dinner. He could do this. “That would be acceptable.” 

Really, he could do this.

* * *

Nearly three hours later, Spock walked into his own kitchen and went straight to the refrigerator. Po had already disappeared into her bedroom, claiming a need to complete homework that was probably fifty percent true. Spock thought she needed a little time alone to process things, too. 

Jim stood in the doorway, scratching his neck. “I, uh, I don’t mean to be following you around. I can just cut out, and see you —“

Spock held up two beers. “I believe you’ve earned both of these, though as they are my last, I hope you won’t mind if I drink one.”

Jim laughed and accepted the bottle once Spock opened it. He leaned against the doorframe again. “So, that was terrible.” 

Spock finished his own sip, leaning back against the counter. “It was — awkward,” Spock allowed.

Jim took a long pull from his bottle. “Seriously, Spock, I’ve been in combat, and it was only slightly more life-threatening than your father trying to figure out my intentions toward you.”

“It was an exhaustive list of questions,” Spock said. His father had requested a ride home, as he had traveled in the ambulance with Amanda. Though Spock had briefly debated introducing him to the concept of “the taxi,” Jim’s good manners had won out, and they’d wound up in Jim’s car for the ride back to The Embassy. En route, Sarek had asked for details on Jim’s schooling, his employment, any prior marriages, his parents and siblings, and his political affiliations. Spock had sat in the backseat with Po, whose expression of fascination had probably been just as obvious as Spock’s look of horror. “I particularly liked the part where he managed to corner you on the military’s position on dependents for gay officers.” 

Jim huffed and took another drink. “Yeah, so — should we go find a preacher now, or do you think we might be able to put it off until the courthouse opens Monday?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I am, after all, mostly interested in your pension.”

“I’ve heard worse motives.” 

“My mother has also expressed an interest in meeting you,” Spock said, and Jim just nodded. “You seem unsurprised.”

“Well, they’ve got to figure I’m at least the long-term boyfriend, showing up at the hospital and treating Po like she’s basically my own,” he said with a casual shrug. “And they’re clearly both fascinated to find out more about both of you, so — it makes sense. I’ve decided to take it as a compliment, since your dad doesn’t seem like the type to waste his time on the third degree if he thinks I’m contemptible.”

“No,” Spock agreed, “he is not one to suffer fools gladly.”

“I just bet. Plus, I figured it might be nice to be distracted from everything for him.”

Spock nodded. He’d thought that was at least part of the motivation for Sarek’s aggressive questioning, too. “Thank you,” he said, quietly. 

Jim nodded. He stepped into the room and leaned against the counter, near Spock but not yet in his space. The few feet separating them felt about like normal and, now, like a bit too much. “What did you have planned for tonight?”

Jim turned his head, looking at Spock for half a minute between half-open eyes. “Nothing,” he said, and smiled. “Well, dinner at my place, and a dessert from Uhura. Then either a movie on the couch, or dancing, if you wanted — I know a pretty good jazz club two towns up. Honestly, I kept coming up with these really elaborate plans, and none of them actually seemed to work: too fancy, or too weird, or too loud, or something.” The refrigerator hummed behind them, and Spock heard the creak of Po’s bed, anchoring noises. Jim sipped his beer. “I just thought we’d, you know, spend some time together.”

“Oh.” Spock let himself picture it: an easy evening with Jim, exploring what it might mean to be more than just friends and friendly. “Raincheck?”

“Absolutely.” Jim turned, his hip now brushing the counter, and he carefully set his beer down next to him. Barely a foot of space existed between them, now, and Spock watched Jim’s eyes focus briefly on his mouth. “I should go home,” he said. “Rand hates opening by herself, but she said she’d do it. If I’m in early, she’ll be grateful.”

Spock nodded. Jim was inches away. “Reasonable,” he said. He swallowed, mouth feeling dry suddenly. “Perhaps Po and I will stop in on the way to the hospital.”

“I’d like that,” Jim said. 

Spock looked down at the bottle he was still holding. “Is there anything else you’d like?” 

Jim laughed, and then one of his hands slid onto Spock’s waist, and the other cupped his cheek. “One thing,” he said, and then kissed him. It was a good kiss: sweet, but not too sweet, and it felt like relief and a promise at the same time. Spock set his own beer down and then reached for Jim, his hands sliding up his back and hooking at his shoulders. Jim drew back, smiling, the bridge of his nose pressing against Spock’s cheek. “I need you to promise me something," he said.

“Yes?”

“Whenever we finally go out again,” he said, and one of his fingers suddenly traced up the buttons of Spock’s shirt, “you gotta wear this exact outfit.”

“You like it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Jim said. “And I’m gonna be honest with you, I think I’m gonna like taking it off of you, too.”

Spock sighed and rested his head against Jim’s shoulder. He wanted that, he realized, but he wasn’t there tonight. Tonight, he was exhausted and keyed up, worried, and vaguely afraid for his mother. “Deal,” he whispered, and Jim nodded.

“Good.” 

He drew back slowly, then gave Spock a small smile. “Tell Po I said good-night, will you? I’ll see you at the diner tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Spock said. His hand lingered against Jim’s shoulder. For one fleeting moment, he wanted to ask him to stay, but he made himself pull his hand away. “Good. Good-night, Jim.”

He watched Jim leave, heard the opening and closing of the front door and then the low solid rumble of his car’s motor a few moments after that. Babette was likely calling Patty that very moment to report Jim’s departure time; by morning, the entire town would have some incorrect version of the story. It didn’t matter, though. Spock knew the real story, and while it wasn’t the night he would have wanted, given the reality, it was the best possible end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's one-ish more chapters to go here because I couldn't just leave Amanda at the hospital and Jim without his promised actual date.


	11. Reality Checks and Balances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get back to normal, but... what's normal, now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to any and everyone who read this. I didn't imagine it would find any readers outside of my brain but I'm grateful that it did!

By morning, Spock felt less sanguine about everything. Po looked worried at breakfast and talked almost non-stop, darting from topic to topic: her school, her old school, a show she had seen on Netflix, a new kind of toaster pastry she wanted to try, T’Pring’s transfer —

“Po,” Spock said, gently, resting a hand on her shoulder as she walked toward the coffee pot. “Your grandmother is going to be fine.”

“I know,” she said, tone completely unconvincing. Spock looked at her until she met his eyes, and then she took a deep breath. “I know,” she said, more quietly. “It’s just…”

“Unsettling?” 

“Yeah, I guess.” She left her mug on the counter at walked back to their kitchen table, but she didn’t take a seat. Her face was paler than usual, with faint purple smudges beneath her eyes. “Are we doing anything today?”

“I mentioned to Jim that we would try to stop in before making our way back to the hospital.” Spock, too, had not slept well. Upon waking for the last time at 5 a.m., he had begun planning their day. “Visiting hours begin at 10 for her ward.”

“Is Grandpa going?”

“I do not know.” Po’s stare was a prompt. “Though it would be reasonable to call,” he admitted, and Po nodded. 

She handed him his phone from the table by the door. “You do that, and I’ll drive.” Spock raised an eyebrow. “What, it’s just to Jim’s. You know I need the practice.”

“Please remember that an ambulance ride is not how we want to get to the hospital,” he said, but handed her the keys. He dialed his father as they walked down the sidewalk toward Spock’s jeep. 

“I had planned to depart at 9:30,” his father said. “Your mother has already seen two doctors this morning. They apparently prefer to do their rounds in the dark of night.” His annoyance was unmistakeable, and Spock wondered if it was perhaps this exact attitude that the doctors were trying to escape.

“Po and I will be there shortly after 10,” Spock said. “Unless you would rather we come at a different time.”

“I don’t believe I have any preference,” Sarek said. “Of course your mother will find it agreeable whenever you visit.”

“Then we shall see you shortly. Oh, one moment.” Po was waving at him and making a motion like lifting something to her mouth. Spock sighed. “Po would like to know whether you would like us to deliver something to eat.”

“Thank you, yes,” Sarek said. “I, too, have something to ask.”

It turned out that Amanda had left her car at the club on Saturday, having been immediately shuffled into an ambulance at the first signs of her heart attack. Sarek was unavailable to fetch the car, but he asked for Spock’s help — “or your partner’s, if he is available.”

“Jim?” Spock asked, then said quickly, “Po, eyes forward.”

“The keys are at the reception desk. The concierge will know to look for you,” Sarek said, and then signed off before Spock could object.

“Did Grandpa just ask Jim to come visit?”

Spock frowned. “He needs our assistance with returning your grandmother’s car to their home, and he suggested Jim might be available to assist.”

“Oh.” Po shrugged, then made a left onto Main Street. “That’s a good idea, actually. What did he say about breakfast?”

Spock nearly rolled his eyes. “He said yes, which means you have volunteered us to bring your grandfather something to eat.” 

“It’s nice,” Po said. “Jim’s got plenty of —“

“Your vegan grandfather,” Spock said, and Po was silent. They came to a stop at the town’s only four-way stop intersection, and they watched Bitsy Morgan cross the street dragging a red wagon, in which perched her three tiny dogs.

“OK,” Po admitted, “not my best call. But I’m sure Jim’s up to the challenge.”

Jim was, as it turned out. “Applesauce muffins,” he said, presenting Spock with a paper bag. “No butter, no eggs. Lucky thing, too.”

“Why do you have these?” Po asked, looking at them with open curiosity.

Jim grinned. “Bones. If he asks, tell him I ate them, OK? Tell them I ate those, and a salad, and you’ve never seen me looking so healthy.”

That wasn’t untrue, actually. Jim did look healthy that morning, in a blue-checked flannel shirt and his soft, worn jeans, tan and fit and practically radiating energy. Spock wanted to — he wasn’t sure, actually. It was confusing to even think about all of the things he wanted to do with, and for, and have from Jim. 

Jim raised his eyebrows. “Do I have something on my face?”

“What?”

“You’re kind of… staring,” he said, and his grin started to spread. 

Po snorted. “Oh my god, you guys better not turn gross.”

“Second that!” Rand said, sliding two plates in front of Jim. “Table 3.”

“Right,” Jim said. “One second.” He walked away to deliver the food, and Spock did not watch him go. He turned, instead, to his daughter, giving her a speculative look.

“You could drive me to your grandparents’ club,” he said. “I could then drive their car back to their house, and we could go to the hospital from there.”

“Or,” she countered, sipping her coffee, “I can go right to the hospital, and you can get Jim to take you to the club and the house, and then he can drop you at the hospital in time for dinner with Grandpa.”

Spock sighed. He knew the right thing to do at this moment was to support his father, and he genuinely wanted to visit his mother. However, he also wanted to just go home, climb back into bed, and warp back into his old, normal, un-parent-filled life. As time travel wasn’t possible, he just nodded, accepting this was the second-best choice. “I shall ask,” he said. 

When Jim returned, Spock told him a brief version of the car pickup plan. Jim just shrugged his acceptance. “We can go now or after lunch,” he said. “I’ve got Chekov covering the evening, but it’s not so busy until then.”

“I would like to check in at the Inn this morning,” Spock said. “Perhaps I could meet you here after lunch?”

“Sure,” Jim said, then gently touched his forearm for a moment. “Or come by at lunchtime, if you’re hungry. It’s potato soup day.”

That was cause for celebration, as was Jim’s casual touch. “Thank you. I may.”

As they walked out to the car, Po said, “Should I drop you at the Inn?”

“It is only a few blocks,” Spock said, but followed her back to their vehicle. “How long are you planning to visit?”

She shrugged. “I brought all my school stuff. Figured I could camp out as long as I’m needed or welcome. But I know you probably don’t want to hang out that long.” 

Spock was puzzled by this. “You desire a private visit?”

“Not really,” she said, as they merged into traffic. “Just, I know you and Grandpa still have this, um, tension? And I figured probably neither one of you needed a full day of it, on top of everything else.”

“Logical.” Spending the day at the hospital with his father was not high on his list of productive and peaceful pastimes, of course, though he would stay at the slightest hint that his mother required it. 

“Also I thought maybe you needed a little time to, like, be awkward around Jim.” Spock didn’t look over, but he could hear the grin in Po’s voice. “Or to plan a better date? Or make up for lost time? Or… do you need to make up for anything, like —“

“Po,” Spock said, nearly sighing. “Is there something you’d like to know?”

“Clearly, he didn’t stay the night,” she said, “but, uh — were things OK, once we got home? It seemed like he didn’t stay very long. And I know Grandpa was kind of intense in the car, but —“

Spock rested his hand gently on her shoulder, surprised by her genuine anxiety. “It was fine. Jim is fine. He found your grandfather’s questioning rather flattering, I believe.”

“Oh, good.” They turned onto Grove Street, home of the Inn. Po kept her eyes straight forward. “Did you kiss?”

“Yes,” Spock said, taking a calm sip from his coffee. He was reasonably certain he was blushing and was surprised to see Po was, too.

“Was it — good?”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Do you expect me to kiss and tell?”

“Kind of,” she said, and laughed. She pulled into the first available parking space at the front. “All right, I’m not sure I really want to know details, I just — things are OK? Even though, I mean, I know they’re not, it wasn’t exactly romance city last night.”

Po turned off the car but made no move to get out, and Spock considered what to say. He really had no details to share, nor did he want to describe the entire scene to his teenaged daughter. What she really wanted, he thought, wasn’t to hear what had happened but to be reassured that Spock was happy. That wasn’t hard to do because it was true. “Things are OK,” he said. “Better than OK.”

“Good,” she said, nodding. He watched a smile creep back onto her face. “I mean, if you blow this, he’s gonna make us pay for coffee.”

“I shall keep that in mind.” 

Weekends were busy at the Inn but didn’t require as much hands-on immediate management from him. They had events running, of course, but they also had a capable event staff. Spock generally stopped in mostly to be seen, as the larger events usually appreciated a personal appearance, but didn’t plan for a long day. 

That morning, he actually didn’t have a plan for the day, at all. 

This was something Nyota immediately helped him solve. He walked into the front lobby, where an unperturbed Sulu was dealing with a family check in. He waved, briefly, and Spock went to his office to read messages. Nyota met him there.“I heard about your mother,” she said as soon as she walked in. She wore her usual apron and a frown of concentration. “Does she like risotto?”

“I am uncertain,” Spock said, “though she generally has a broad palate.”

“I’m going to make squash risotto,” Nyota said. “Sweet potatoes, caramelized onion, and it freezes like a dream. I’ll even do vegan, though oh, god, with a little bleu cheese…”

“That is appreciated,” Spock said. He took a seat at his desk and accepted her offered cup of coffee. Nyota sat in the facing chair next to the desk. “How did you hear?”

“Jim told me,” she said, shrugging, and Spock continued to stare. “I went by for breakfast this morning.”

Nyota picked up her own cup of coffee and stared into it, as though evaluating it, though Spock couldn’t guess for what. He narrowed his eyes. “You do not go to Jim’s for breakfast on Sundays when you’re working. In fact, you usually eat before Jim’s is even open. ”

“I was out of coffee,” she said, but it had the clear tone of someone trying an excuse. Spock crossed his arms, and she sighed and shook her head. “All right. I wanted to know how things had gone, and, well, Jim pretty much wears his heart on his sleeve, so I figured I’d be able to tell just by looking at him.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t openly weeping or brooding all over the place, so I figured things were fine. Then he saw me, wanted to know if I’d heard from you, and we got to talking.” She set her coffee down, now, and crossed her arms in an almost perfect mirror of his own position. Spock became very interested in his own mug. “I was surprised I didn’t hear from you.”

He nodded. “There was not much to tell. She is expected to make a full recovery.”

“But you had to spend an evening in a waiting room with your dad. That can’t have been the highlight of your week.”

Spock allowed a half-smile to lift his mouth. “It was not the evening I had expected.” Nyota laid a gentle hand on his arm. “All things considered, though, it was the best case scenario for this otherwise terrible situation.”

“Meaning, in translation, that Jim stayed and played comforting boyfriend.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I do not believe he was playing.”

“No,” Nyota said, gaze softening. Her tone lost its sarcasm. “I don’t think so, either.” She squeezed his arm. “Come find me around 1, and I’ll have the risotto ready. And anything else I can fit in.”

She was gone before he could express his thanks, though he would be sure to do so, later — perhaps after he had had a chance to test out Jim’s welcome one more time. 

+++

The diner was busy over lunch, but not so crowded that Spock couldn’t snag a table by the window. He had brought a book with him, intending to have a peaceful meal while waiting on Jim to wrap things up, but that was of course not to be. Only moments after Jim had delivered his water and taken his order, Patty and Babette appeared at the next table. “You doin’ OK, honey?” Babette asked. “We heard about your mama. That’s tough.”

“I am mostly fine,” Spock said. “She is expected to make a full recovery.”

“Yes, that’s what they said about my fourth husband,” Patty said, and she and Babette shook their heads. 

Spock knew better than to ask. 

“You waitin’ on Jim?” Babette asked, attention suddenly laser-focused on Spock. “You two gonna slip out for a little afternoon delight?”

Patty giggled, and Spock closed his book. “He is going to drive me to complete an errand for my father,” Spock said. 

Just then, Jim appeared at his table, carrying Spock’s lunch. “Hey, I put it in a to-go box because if you’re ready, I can sneak out right now. But I gotta go upstairs and grab a jacket. Want to come with?”

“Yes,” Spock said, afraid his answer was too emphatic. “Ladies, have a lovely lunch.”

Upstairs, Jim set the to-go container on the dining table and shook his head. “I don’t need anything,” he admitted. “My jacket’s still in the car. I just thought you might not want to hang out with them much longer.”

“Very true,” Spock admitted, opening the box. His grilled cheese sandwich awaited. “Though I’m afraid to imagine what exactly they think we might be doing up here.” 

Jim laughed and rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. “Well, you know those two. They’re gonna talk no matter what.”

This, of course, was true, and it was something Spock contemplated as they drove toward his parents’ club shortly thereafter. The countryside began to appear around them, and the houses they did pass began to move further and further back into luscious, manicured lawns. “Do you have any qualms about town gossip as it relates to our relationship?” Spock asked.

Jim’s hands flexed on the steering wheel. “Uh, what?” 

“As you mentioned, Patty and Babette will talk.” Spock watched as a rise of trees drew closer, signaling the edge of the golf course. “I know my father made certain assumptions —“

“No, it’s — I’m fine,” Jim said. “Spock, seriously, everyone in town already knew how I felt about you. That you’re, like, not running screaming or something is pretty much a tremendous victory for me. So I can handle gossip. If I’m being totally honest, I might be willing to make some of it come true.”

The turn for the course loomed. “Babette seemed to think we were about to engage in, ah, an ‘afternoon delight.’”

Jim chuckled. “Of course she thought that.”

“I would, of course, not want to do anything that endangers the upholstery of your car.”

The car sailed right past the turn, and Jim cursed as he pulled to a stop. Luckily, the road around them was empty, which made backing up to the club’s entrance easy. As they rolled through the imposing brick gates, which were slightly less red than Spock’s face, Jim said, “I would risk it, honestly,” and Spock laughed.

He pointed Jim toward a parking space for visitors, near the front. As Jim parked, Spock could see the valet already had an eye on them. He looked over at Jim, still smiling. “What?” Jim said, as they climbed out. “Not feeling risk-prone today?”

“Let’s not have our first sexual encounter as the result of an escalating game of flirtatious chicken,” Spock said, and Jim cracked up. He was still smothering bubbling laughter when they reached the front desk.

The request for keys went smoothly. Unfortunately, the wait for the keys did not. 

“Oh, no,” Spock muttered, hearing a loud, still-familiar voice from the direction of the dining room. 

“What’s that?” Jim said.

“Vulcan County welcome committee,” Spock said, turning to face the counter. Of course, the wall behind it was a gold-plated mirror, so there seemed little chance he could actually disappear.

“… And then I said to her, baby, you can’t even do the work I pay you for!” the man’s voice said, roaring with laughter at his own punchline. Spock frowned, and Jim stepped over, standing close enough that their shoulders brushed. 

“Hey, you gotta be kidding me, is that Spock Grayson I see?”

Spock did not allow himself the luxury of even frowning. “Bob. Hello.”

In the golden mirror, he looked much the same as he had at their last encounter, sometime in high school. Bob Dyer was tall, broad-shouldered, pink-skinned with perfectly white-blonde hair. His smile was wide and insincere. “Wow, I never thought I’d see you back here. I heard about Amanda, though.” He shook his head. “Shame. Course it would’ve broken any mother’s heart, her son running out like that, I’d think.”

Dyer had never been kind. His family was fourth generation Vulcan County, his father on the board of directors for the club, his mother some leading light in the DAR. He’d been status-obsessed throughout their schooling, political even among peers. Spock felt faint bubbles of rage beginning to rise inside of him, popping lightly against his skin. He took a deep breath. 

Before he could say anything, though, he felt Jim’s hand on his elbow. “Hey, I don’t know who you are, pal, and I’m sure I don’t care, but why don’t you take your uninformed opinions about someone else’s family somewhere else?” Dyer seemed paralyzed, smarmy grin frozen in place. “You need that in smaller words?” Jim asked, voice steady and commanding. “Go mind your own fucking business, asshole.”

Dyer looked torn between wanting to take Jim’s advice and wanting to counter it, likely in some physically aggressive way. Luckily, the reception desk employee returned then, with Spock’s mother’s keys in a small manilla envelope. “I can have Carl pull it around,” she offered, and Spock shook his head.

“That won’t be necessary. Thank you.” He collected the keys and, then, with a quick tangle of their hands, Jim, and walked back to the entrance without turning to see Dyer’s reaction.

Outside, Spock let go of Jim’s hand, and Jim paused on the sidewalk to slide on his sunglasses. “Who was that?”

“Old friend,” Spock said, trying to sound unconcerned.

“Uh-huh.” They walked past the valet stand and toward the small lot where his mother’s car was parked, passing heavy planters full of lush, immaculate plants. The landscaping here had always been suffocating, never beautiful, but today Spock wanted to pull the collar of his shirt free from his throat. It bothered him, more than it should, that Jim had seen that particular display today. He stopped by his mother’s car, intending to say a simple thanks for Jim’s defense, and instead, said, “He was not the worst bully during my experience at Vulcan, but he was among the worst.”

Jim nodded, shielding his eyes against the sun and facing him. “Too bad he hasn’t grown up.”

“Yes,” Spock agreed. “Though I find, at least, that he has less impact than he did before.”

“Good,” Jim said. “And I know it doesn’t need saying, but — your mother’s heart attack wasn’t your fault. All right?”

“Of course,” Spock said, feeling a swell of gratitude. “Thank you.”

“No need to thank me,” Jim said, and then grinned. “But if you’re feeling really grateful, I’d like to continue that afternoon delight conversation later.”

“That is a deal,” Spock agreed, and then he put his mind toward suppressing any further thoughts about it as he prepared to drive his mother’s car to the hospital.


	12. Reality Checks and Balances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock struggles to find balance.

Unfortunately, the next week provided almost no time for further conversation (literal or euphemistic) with Jim. Amanda was released the next day with a list of do’s and don’ts, a clear plastic bag of medications, and, apparently, a new lease on life. This sent her to the nearest yoga and meditation center, suddenly, four days a week, which Spock knew because she called to ask Po to join her. It also meant that when Sarek called to ask if would mind arriving early for their next dinner, Spock forgot that his mother would be absent.

This was how he found himself seated at his mother’s desk while his father hovered behind him, their investment portfolio information on the computer screen before him. “What is it you would like me to do?” Spock asked.

“I am taken to understand that you have some academic experience in accounting and also in investment management.”

Spock wondered briefly where Sarek might have heard this news, and then decided that T’Pring was the most likely candidate. In truth, he’d taken a single course that involved investments, but it had been enough to once advise her well on her retirement portfolio. “This is true.”

“Then, I wonder if you might take a look at our current investments.” He glanced at his watch. “I have a phone call that should not last any longer than 20 minutes. Please list any questions, and I will do my best to respond upon my return, if that is agreeable.”

“It is,” Spock said, at a loss for any other way to reply. Sarek had never asked him for help with… anything, actually. Spock wondered what this meant, but the twenty minute timeline meant he would have no time to consider anything but the numbers before him. Luckily, thy were organized in a straightforward fashion, clearly by his mother, who had embedded brief notes on different classes of investment. 

When Sarek returned, Spock had no pressing questions, save one. “What has occasioned you to ask for my assistance?”

Sarek nodded and closed the office door behind him. It took him a moment, walking the length of the room, before he spoke. “You noticed, I’m certain, that your mother traditionally handles these documents.” 

“Yes.”

“Your mother has always had the better head for figures,” Sarek said, pacing up and down the book-lined wall. “It has never been my strength.”

“It could be,” Spock said, simply, not trying to pass judgement. “Math is a language, like any other, and one benefits from frequent practice.”

Sarek nodded. “I have been focused on the language of diplomacy for so long that I admit to finding the close workings of precise calculation rather… uninteresting.”

“Ah.” Spock focused on the numbers before him, all of which were substantially higher than he might have imagined. Every account held a balance higher than his annual income; several had balances that outpaced the income for the entire Inn. “Surely you have a financial manager who you trust?”

“Indeed,” his father said, pausing in his pacing. He looked up at his shelf of books, hands meeting behind his back. “However, your mother has always dealt with that firm. She has found, now, that she no longer wishes to experience that stress in service of what she called, ‘Relentless penny tracking.’” 

“None of this should be quantified in pennies," Spock said, “though comparatively, I can see how thousands of dollars might appear that way in such a portfolio.” He looked up from the spreadsheet. “Father, if you trust your manager, then I believe you should need to provide no further input, particularly if your goal is only to maintain the wealth you currently have. I could walk you through the different types of investments here and how they would pay out should, ah, something happen to either of you, but I don’t know what would be gained from that.”

Sarek turned. “From what you see, would you think it prudent to trust this financial manager?”

“I see no evidence of malfeasance,” he said. “Without a full understanding of the conversations they’ve had with mother, I wouldn’t be able to say whether the risk they’ve taken is reasonable or not, but I see nothing alarming.”

He nodded, twice, slowly, lips tightly pressed together. “Very good,” he said. 

Spock understood this was a dismissal, and he rose to leave. Sarek’s voice stopped him, halfway to the door. “I am given to understand that your financial acumen has been instrumental to the success of your Inn.”

“To some extent,” Spock said. He would certainly need to have a talk with T’Pring about boundaries soon.

“Do you find the work gratifying?”

Spock bristled. “It may earn only pennies compared to —“

“Spock,” Sarek said, and Spock was stopped by the sadness, the resignation in his tone. “I meant no offense,” he said.

“What did you mean?”

“Only to thank you,” Sarek said. “You have made a complicated task easier at a difficult time. I — I appreciate your assistance.”

Spock thought that was, possibly, the first time he’d ever heard his father genuinely acknowledge gratitude. He nodded, uncertain of what else to say, and was glad to exit into the main hall. He could hear his mother’s voice and Po’s from the front of the house, and he gravitated toward them. Sarek’s words still rung in his head. Would that I had an audio recording of that, Spock thought. While the maid offered him a drink, he entertained himself with imagining making Sarek’s thanks his ringtone from now on. Surely, Jim or Po would be able to engineer this. 

“What are you so happy about?” Po murmured when Amanda excused herself to change clothes. “Is Jim hidden behind the curtains or something?”

“No,” Spock said, “though I will admit to some anticipation of second dinner at the diner later.”

Po frowned. “The food’s gonna be worse, isn’t it?”

Spock clapped her shoulder supportively. “But the company has improved a bit.”

* * *

Four days later, Spock was having the Monday to end all Mondays. 

“It’s actually Wednesday,” Sulu said when Spock mentioned this out loud. 

“Yes,” Spock agreed, “but I’m not actually sure Monday ever stopped.”

They had been inundated by calls and online messages for the past 72 hours. At Christopher Pike’s urging, the Inn had been featured in a recent episode of some trendy-upscale food show, which had aired over the weekend. Spock had agreed to the show originally because it had provided a broader audience for Nyota’s cooking. He hadn’t fully anticipated, though, how quickly the show’s viewers would latch on to the idea of a weekend celebration of their own at the Inn. While he was glad for the business, managing the ringing phones in addition to the weekend rush of guests had meant no leisurely time away for him.

They had spent Monday and Tuesday catching up, returning calls, scheduling events, and — strangely enough — fielding local media requests. Things had started to slow down the night before, but today, to add to the chaos, a water main had broken somewhere too near Scott’s shop for it to be entirely a coincidence. The street had flooded, blocking access to the Inn, and they’d had no water for most of the morning. Their guests had mostly taken it in stride, accepting complimentary bottled water and local wine, but it had taken every hand on deck to manage it.

This meant Spock wasn’t able to pick Po up from school, and none of his usual helpers were, either. Nyota was trying to get the kitchen running again after their unexpected dry spell; Sulu was as worn and as necessary to keeping things running as Spock himself; and Jim’s Diner had ended up absorbing most of their customers for breakfast and lunch on top of a scheduled tour group visit that afternoon. With a heavy sigh, Spock dialed his phone.

“Of course!” his mother said, sounding inordinately pleased. “I was thinking of doing a little shopping this afternoon, anyway. Do you think she’d like to come along?”

“I have no doubt, provided her homework is not too overwhelming.” Sulu signaled to him from the front desk that he needed to sign something, and Spock walked up to handle the delivery while his mother kept talking.

“— And maybe that would make the morning easier, just for today?”

Spock accepted the package, signed the digital line, handed the package to Sulu, and then tried to process what his mother was saying. “You’d like Po to spend the night?”

“If you’re OK with it. And if she’s OK with it, of course. I can certainly make sure she’s there in time for school tomorrow.” There was a delicate pause, as Spock wondered what he should say. “I don’t want to be too forward here, of course, but it would really be doing me such a favor. Your father is traveling for the evening.” Left unspoken was that Amanda likely hadn’t spent a night alone since her heart attack.

Really, Spock had no objections beyond the vague idea that he should object. So far, Po loved her grandparents, and he didn’t think she would mind much a chance to further explore their bookshelves. “If Po is OK with it, I am, too,” Spock said. “Do you need me to drop off some clothes for her?”

“I don’t think so. I thought we’d have dinner by the mall and then just — find something suitable.”

Spock frowned, glad his mother couldn’t see it. “Of course.”

As he hung up, he couldn’t help feeling disappointed. It would be good for Po to spend more time with Amanda. She’d been worried since the heart attack, more than Spock would have guessed. She also had none of the negative associations with their house that he did, so she would likely enjoy the evening. He texted her to be sure, but had no real uncertainty about the answer. Still, though, a tiny jealous part of him wished that she’d reply quickly that she’d rather just spend the evening with him. They’d barely had time together over the weekend, grabbing a quick coffee before Spock’s long work days at the Inn, and their Monday night pancake habit had been broken because of Po’s need to work on a group project. It was strange, but after so many years as a single parent, he’d become used to the two of them being together all the time. He went back to the front desk, feeling glum but determined not to show it. 

An hour later, Nyota appeared in the office door long enough to order him out of it. “The phones aren’t ringing, the water’s running again, and nothing’s on fire. Go get some rest.”

He looked up to see her covered in flour dust, with a smear of jam across the top of her colorful apron. “You, too, should follow this advice.”

“It’s my next stop. Well, that and yelling at Scotty.”

Spock stood and stretched, feeling the muscles of his back protest. He had been seated for too long. “I would suppose he is already having a bad enough day.”

“Sure,” she agreed. “But yelling’s like our foreplay.” She winked, and Spock rolled his eyes. “You need me to drop you at home?”

“No, thank you.” He saw her off with a kiss to the cheek, then spared a moment to feel a little self pity. Really, he should have asked her to drive him home, and then perhaps to come in and stay for a glass of wine. Returning to the empty house after a day like this felt discouraging, but he wasn’t sure what else to do. Al’s held no appeal when he ate alone, and he felt too out of sorts to go to Jim’s. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Jim — they hadn’t been in the same room since before the weekend — but he didn’t feel up to the knowing little looks from the locals who were still basking in the glow of their budding romance.

So he loaded himself and his laptop into the car, considered whether it made any sense to drive 15 miles to Bridgewater for the luxury of drive-thru food, decided he was too lazy even to to that, and steered himself home. He was so preoccupied that he had the car off and his door open before he realized that there were lights on in the house. He never left lights on during the day.

He sighed. Of course. Rubbing his forehead, he locked up the car and walked through the side door, prepared to greet Babette or Maury, who often used their in-case-of-emergency key in less-than-emergency situations, like when their television wasn’t getting excellent reception. Chasing out his well-meaning but eccentric neighbors would be the perfect end to his day, he thought.

It wasn’t Babette in the kitchen, though. It was Jim.

Spock walked in and stopped immediately on the threshold, one hand tangled in his own jacket. Jim was standing in front of the stove, stirring a red sauce, while another larger pot bubbled with water next to it. He looked over at Spock and smiled, slow and easy. “Hey.”

“Hello,” Spock said. 

“I hope this is all right,” Jim said, gesturing to the stove and then himself. “I used your hidden key, which is, by the way, not very hidden.”

“Apparently,” Spock said, but shook his head. 

“Go set your stuff down. Dinner will be a few minutes.”

It took him a moment to unfreeze himself, but then he was able to walk across the kitchen, remove his jacket, and set down his computer without tripping or dropping anything. Once he’d done that, he paused to take a deep breath, then returned to the kitchen. Jim was pouring wine into two glasses, and he held one up for Spock.

“Thank you,” he said.

Jim nodded. “So, a little bird told me that you’re on your own for dinner this evening, and I knew if I didn’t see to it, you’d be eating beans out of can or something.”

“I do buy the low sodium kind now,” Spock said, and Jim rolled his eyes.

“Also, I haven’t seen you in a few days.” Jim held his glass and returned to stirring the tomato sauce. It smelled delicious, heavy on garlic and with a hint of something sweet.

Spock set his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’ve been — the Inn has been quite busy, and —“

“That wasn’t criticism,” he said, setting down the stirring spoon. “That was me saying I wanted to see you. I like seeing you.”

“Oh,” Spock said, then felt himself blush. He sipped his wine to cover it, moving over to the table. Jim had set out crackers and cheese slices as well as a cluster of dark purple grapes. “Are these a fruit?”

“You don’t like grapes, you better give me back that wine glass,” Jim said. “Don’t worry, there are definitely some preservatives in your dessert.”

While Jim drained the pasta and mixed it with the sauce, Spock allowed himself to relax. He took a seat at the table, loosened his tie, and began snacking on the crackers. It made him realize he hadn’t even had a lunch break that day — and he wondered if Sulu had, either. “I’m gonna guess your day was twice as long as mine,” Jim said, still concentrating on the food at the stove.

“While not literally possible, it certainly does seem that today was longer than most,” Spock admitted. “Did you lose water?”

“Nah, but the street was pretty messed up for a while. Actually saw one of the Baker kids out there with an inner tube for a while.” He finished grating cheese. Spock took the moment to watch him, unobserved. Jim wore his usual worn jeans and a long-sleeved blue T-shirt, which stretched across his shoulders in one broad, appealing sweep. He had been in Spock’s house and in his kitchen countless times over the years, had even cooked there a few times when Spock had needed some help, but this felt new. It felt warm, and intimate, and surprisingly right.

“Here we go.” Jim turned and presented Spock with a wide bowl of pasta, taking another for himself. “No meat, don’t worry.”

A cloud of rich scent hung over the table, thick enough that Spock’s mouth watered. He took a bite. The sauce was rich and creamy, the tomatoes broken down into a chunky, tangy paste against the noodles. Sweet fresh basil and parsley chimed against his tongue, contrasted by salty cheese. He closed his eyes, savoring.

“It is unexpectedly hot to see you enjoying my cooking that much,” Jim said. 

Spock smiled without opening his eyes. “It is absolutely to be expected how attractive I find it that you’ve cooked for me.”

“Yeah? Good. I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries, but — “

“Jim,” Spock said, now looking across at him. He rested his hand gently over Jim’s. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

They ate in silence for a minute or two, until Spock found himself contemplating the bottom of his empty bowl. “More?” Jim asked.

“I am thinking,” Spock said.

“Oh?”

“Was it wise to use this much garlic?”

Jim’s brows furrowed. “You’re not a garlic fan?”

Spock met his eyes. “Was it wise to use this much garlic when we have the house to ourselves all night?”

It took just a second, and then Jim grinned. “All night?”

“Yes. Po is staying overnight with her grandparents.”

The grin broadened, and Jim sat back, stretching his arm over the empty chair next to him. “You could loan me a toothbrush.”

“I could,” Spock said. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“Stay the night.”

“Yeah,” Jim said, maybe too quickly but Spock didn’t care. He loved the eagerness in Jim’s voice, the awe, the anticipation. “Yes. Absolutely.”

And so it was that they had, finally, their first date, and their first overnight, and their first, well, almost everything. There would be other challenges to face, of course, and many new relationship hurdles to navigate. Waking up next to Jim the next morning, though, the sunlight glittering through his curtains, Jim’s hand slung casually over his hip, Spock felt optimistic. He felt, for once, understood, and lucky, and home. 

And he thought they’d make it through this all, together, just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end!
> 
> If there were to be a season 2, here's what the trailer would look like:  
> A mysterious young man named David (with recognizable blue eyes) appears in Jim's diner.   
> Po develops an interest in someone Spock considers inappropriate (cue photos of young Chekov furtively asking Jim for advice on currying Spock's favor)  
> Admiral Pike comes to visit the Inn  
> ... tune in next time? (Probably not, but feel free, anyone, to run with this).


End file.
